Purchasing Managers
What the pay figures show
- Where are purchasing managers paid best? The District of Columbia, at $175,720. That answer does not survive a pay stub. Take income tax out and New Hampshire is ahead. Then count what things cost locally, and Arkansas wins — the money there behaves like $130,473. Three questions. Three different states.
- The nominal leader for purchasing managers is the District of Columbia at $175,720, but the ordering does not hold through either adjustment. Applying federal, FICA and state income tax moves the top position to New Hampshire; deflating by regional price parity moves it again, to Arkansas at $130,473 in national-average terms. ⚠️ Federal tax is not what does this — it is uniform across states and cannot change a ranking. State income tax reorders first, price level second, and the two act independently.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$148,080
People doing it
84,320
Highest paid
$175,720
DC
Best off, really
$130,473
AR, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$92,490
Highest tenth
$223,280
Lowest, really
$75,029
HI
States with data
50
National average
$156,360
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
86.51%
AR, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job is fairly steady around the country. Count tax and local prices and the states bunch closer still, from $75,029 to $130,473. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- Just 84,320 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 50 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $148,080. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, The District of Columbia pays most.
- Geographic dispersion in purchasing managers is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $75,029 through $130,473. Where nominal spread is this contained, relocation decisions in the occupation turn on non-wage factors, because the wage differential does not survive the adjustments in a form large enough to drive them.
- 84,320 are employed nationally in purchasing managers — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for purchasing managers 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: Purchasing Managers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $92,490 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $148,080 |
| Top tenth earn over | $223,280 |
| This salary | $148,080 |
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 Purchasing Managers
The national median for this job
$148,080around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $92,490 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $148,080 |
| Top tenth | $223,280 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Purchasing Managers, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Louisiana · $109,630 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $175,720 |
| Spread | $66,090 |
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 | $134,670 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $138,585 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AR | $156,450 | $112,870 | $130,473 |
| KS | $159,850 | $111,892 | $124,373 |
| CO | $171,250 | $121,489 | $119,833 |
| WV | $147,220 | $106,037 | $118,118 |
| NH | $162,900 | $122,608 | $116,387 |
| VA | $166,230 | $116,087 | $115,224 |
| GA | $155,360 | $110,301 | $114,066 |
| TN | $137,060 | $104,947 | $113,437 |
| WA | $162,730 | $122,492 | $112,831 |
| SD | $128,670 | $99,212 | $112,619 |
| NJ | $174,520 | $121,623 | $111,701 |
| ND | $130,110 | $98,918 | $111,681 |
| MA | $170,750 | $119,756 | $110,641 |
| IL | $153,370 | $108,647 | $109,906 |
| MD | $161,470 | $113,924 | $109,579 |
| OH | $134,580 | $100,267 | $109,209 |
| MI | $142,120 | $102,616 | $108,952 |
| NM | $134,790 | $98,121 | $108,558 |
| DC | $175,720 | $119,403 | $107,760 |
| ID | $136,970 | $98,479 | $107,715 |
| NY | $166,300 | $115,592 | $107,402 |
| NC | $138,710 | $101,048 | $107,340 |
| PA | $141,790 | $103,827 | $106,489 |
| TX | $134,670 | $103,313 | $106,316 |
| AL | $130,710 | $95,241 | $105,859 |
| WY | $123,380 | $95,596 | $105,227 |
| MO | $132,100 | $96,285 | $104,929 |
| MS | $122,940 | $90,470 | $103,641 |
| MN | $144,810 | $101,709 | $103,345 |
| SC | $131,720 | $95,400 | $102,386 |
| IN | $126,880 | $94,275 | $102,268 |
| AZ | $138,940 | $103,160 | $102,033 |
| IA | $121,580 | $90,353 | $101,787 |
| KY | $124,350 | $92,025 | $101,721 |
| NE | $124,010 | $91,088 | $100,788 |
| VT | $135,720 | $97,100 | $100,481 |
| MT | $123,480 | $90,049 | $99,784 |
| OK | $119,310 | $87,896 | $99,558 |
| FL | $133,410 | $102,452 | $99,033 |
| ME | $135,970 | $96,122 | $98,996 |
| CA | $159,830 | $109,738 | $97,474 |
| WI | $124,990 | $90,732 | $97,459 |
| RI | $134,560 | $98,199 | $96,831 |
| UT | $125,940 | $91,742 | $96,568 |
| NV | $120,270 | $93,440 | $96,350 |
| CT | $138,680 | $98,983 | $95,461 |
| LA | $109,630 | $83,052 | $94,009 |
| OR | $137,190 | $93,473 | $89,259 |
| AK | $114,650 | $89,486 | $87,977 |
| HI | $113,490 | $81,488 | $75,029 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of purchasing managers 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 $148,080.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for purchasing managers. It is the simplest case on purpose, so the states can be compared against each other rather than against each other's family circumstances. City income taxes are not counted. On that household, New Hampshire keeps the most at $122,608.
- The price adjustment for purchasing managers 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 — Hawaii anchors the bottom at $75,029. 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 purchasing managers, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $148,080, 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.
- The household modeled for purchasing managers is a single filer, standard deduction, no dependants, no pre-tax contributions. Holding the household constant is what makes the interstate comparison meaningful; it also means the absolute figures overstate liability for most real filers. On that basis New Hampshire retains the most, $122,608. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms figures for purchasing managers 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.