Parts Salespersons
What the pay figures show
- North Dakota comes first for parts salespersons on every measure. $48,600 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $46,550 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For parts salespersons, North Dakota's $48,600 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $46,550. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$38,630
People doing it
270,070
Highest paid
$48,600
ND
Best off, really
$46,550
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$28,240
Highest tenth
$62,890
Lowest, really
$29,202
NC
States with data
50
National average
$43,830
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $29,202 and $46,550. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- About 270,070 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $38,630. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 50 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $38,630. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, North Dakota pays most.
- Interstate variation for parts salespersons is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $29,202 to $46,550. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- With 270,070 workers, parts salespersons sits in the middle of the BLS headcount distribution. The state-level spread described above therefore applies to a meaningful population rather than a niche one.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for parts salespersons in 50 jurisdictions, short of the full set. ⚠️ Absence reflects estimate suppression — small samples or disclosure rules — rather than absence of employment, so the state comparison above is over the published subset.
Pay band: Parts Salespersons
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $28,240 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $38,630 |
| Top tenth earn over | $62,890 |
| This salary | $38,630 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Parts Salespersons
The national median for this job
$38,630around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $28,240 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $38,630 |
| Top tenth | $62,890 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Parts Salespersons, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Louisiana · $31,310 |
|---|---|
| Highest | North Dakota · $48,600 |
| Spread | $17,290 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $35,440 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $36,470 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND | $48,600 | $41,230 | $46,550 |
| SD | $45,370 | $38,635 | $43,856 |
| IA | $46,670 | $38,518 | $43,392 |
| MT | $45,060 | $37,025 | $41,027 |
| NE | $45,100 | $37,069 | $41,017 |
| WI | $45,380 | $37,259 | $40,022 |
| ID | $44,580 | $36,491 | $39,913 |
| VT | $46,260 | $38,056 | $39,382 |
| MN | $47,030 | $38,271 | $38,887 |
| AK | $46,130 | $39,245 | $38,584 |
| CO | $47,660 | $39,086 | $38,553 |
| MI | $44,070 | $35,968 | $38,189 |
| AZ | $46,020 | $38,409 | $37,989 |
| ME | $45,350 | $36,878 | $37,980 |
| NH | $46,370 | $39,438 | $37,437 |
| WA | $46,830 | $39,808 | $36,668 |
| WY | $38,620 | $33,211 | $36,557 |
| MO | $39,740 | $33,181 | $36,159 |
| CT | $44,400 | $36,107 | $34,823 |
| NJ | $45,510 | $37,781 | $34,698 |
| IL | $42,240 | $34,174 | $34,570 |
| NM | $36,890 | $31,202 | $34,521 |
| NV | $38,740 | $33,308 | $34,345 |
| AR | $35,320 | $29,711 | $34,345 |
| WV | $36,800 | $30,807 | $34,317 |
| OK | $36,390 | $30,282 | $34,300 |
| OH | $36,790 | $31,445 | $34,250 |
| NY | $45,180 | $36,639 | $34,043 |
| IN | $37,500 | $31,235 | $33,883 |
| TN | $36,110 | $31,194 | $33,718 |
| UT | $39,190 | $31,925 | $33,605 |
| HI | $45,120 | $36,419 | $33,532 |
| OR | $45,190 | $35,086 | $33,504 |
| KY | $36,400 | $30,271 | $33,460 |
| KS | $36,940 | $30,089 | $33,445 |
| MA | $44,660 | $36,151 | $33,400 |
| MD | $42,460 | $34,643 | $33,322 |
| MS | $35,000 | $28,995 | $33,216 |
| CA | $44,440 | $36,974 | $32,842 |
| PA | $38,520 | $31,948 | $32,767 |
| GA | $36,970 | $30,639 | $31,685 |
| TX | $35,440 | $30,656 | $31,547 |
| DE | $38,050 | $31,208 | $31,443 |
| VA | $38,070 | $31,341 | $31,108 |
| AL | $33,820 | $27,927 | $31,041 |
| FL | $37,190 | $32,062 | $30,992 |
| LA | $31,310 | $26,785 | $30,318 |
| RI | $36,450 | $30,521 | $30,096 |
| SC | $32,180 | $27,695 | $29,723 |
| NC | $32,480 | $27,490 | $29,202 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of parts salespersons earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $38,630.
- Take-home figures for parts salespersons assume one person filing alone, with no dependants and nothing going into a pension before tax. Any of those lowers the tax and raises what you keep, so treat these as the plain case rather than your case. Local city income taxes are not included either, and in a few states those matter. In North Dakota, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $41,230.
- The price adjustment for parts salespersons uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — North Carolina anchors the bottom at $29,202. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for parts salespersons, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $38,630, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- Take-home calculations for parts salespersons assume a single filer with no dependants, the standard deduction, and no pre-tax retirement or HSA contributions. Each omitted item reduces taxable income, so the figures function as a lower bound on retained pay for this household shape; the highest such figure is $41,230, in North Dakota. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- Real-terms figures for parts salespersons deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.