Retail Salespersons
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for retail salespersons is Washington, at $39,560. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and North Dakota comes out ahead, worth $35,156. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for retail salespersons: Washington leads at $39,560 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting North Dakota to $35,156 in real terms. Price level, not tax, is the operative variable for this occupation — and it is the one absent from essentially every published wage comparison.
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
$35,410
People doing it
3,897,860
Highest paid
$39,560
WA
Best off, really
$35,156
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$27,210
Highest tenth
$47,890
Lowest, really
$26,908
GA
States with data
51
National average
$37,310
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Nationally, this job pays within a fairly narrow band. Adjust for tax and for local prices and the band tightens again, to between $26,908 and $35,156. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- About 3,897,860 people in the country do this job. Very few jobs are this big. That is part of why its geography is worth setting out with care.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $35,410. Nothing is missing.
- Wages for retail salespersons cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $26,908 to $35,156. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- 3,897,860 workers are employed nationally in retail salespersons. At this scale the occupation's wage geography is a macroeconomic fact as much as a career one, and small per-worker differentials aggregate into substantial regional flows.
- Coverage for retail salespersons is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Retail Salespersons
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $27,210 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $35,410 |
| Top tenth earn over | $47,890 |
| This salary | $35,410 |
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 Retail Salespersons
The national median for this job
$35,410around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $27,210 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $35,410 |
| Top tenth | $47,890 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Retail Salespersons, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $28,640 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $39,560 |
| Spread | $10,920 |
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 | $30,800 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $31,695 |
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 | $36,040 | $31,138 | $35,156 |
| SD | $34,370 | $29,796 | $33,823 |
| MT | $36,270 | $30,375 | $33,659 |
| WY | $34,310 | $29,748 | $32,745 |
| VT | $37,400 | $31,234 | $32,322 |
| ID | $35,080 | $29,361 | $32,115 |
| AK | $37,290 | $32,143 | $31,601 |
| NM | $33,300 | $28,472 | $31,500 |
| ME | $36,640 | $30,406 | $31,315 |
| WA | $39,560 | $33,966 | $31,288 |
| CO | $37,950 | $31,711 | $31,279 |
| WI | $34,480 | $29,038 | $31,191 |
| MO | $33,460 | $28,430 | $30,982 |
| MN | $36,370 | $30,276 | $30,763 |
| NV | $34,190 | $29,652 | $30,575 |
| MI | $34,640 | $28,792 | $30,570 |
| IA | $31,360 | $26,798 | $30,189 |
| TN | $31,950 | $27,852 | $30,105 |
| AZ | $35,720 | $30,391 | $30,058 |
| NE | $31,870 | $27,023 | $29,901 |
| NH | $36,200 | $31,267 | $29,680 |
| KS | $32,180 | $26,530 | $29,489 |
| DE | $35,360 | $29,196 | $29,416 |
| CT | $36,490 | $30,468 | $29,384 |
| UT | $33,900 | $27,910 | $29,378 |
| IL | $35,370 | $28,994 | $29,330 |
| OH | $30,800 | $26,797 | $29,187 |
| AR | $29,270 | $25,074 | $28,985 |
| RI | $34,860 | $29,303 | $28,895 |
| IN | $31,530 | $26,614 | $28,870 |
| DC | $38,500 | $31,971 | $28,853 |
| NY | $37,720 | $31,048 | $28,848 |
| CA | $38,440 | $32,393 | $28,773 |
| LA | $29,490 | $25,377 | $28,725 |
| HI | $37,790 | $31,047 | $28,586 |
| FL | $34,010 | $29,507 | $28,522 |
| OK | $29,660 | $25,178 | $28,518 |
| SC | $30,690 | $26,527 | $28,470 |
| NJ | $36,520 | $30,963 | $28,437 |
| NC | $31,370 | $26,643 | $28,302 |
| VA | $34,240 | $28,484 | $28,272 |
| MD | $35,510 | $29,389 | $28,268 |
| AL | $30,040 | $25,065 | $27,859 |
| MA | $36,610 | $30,086 | $27,796 |
| OR | $36,770 | $29,058 | $27,748 |
| KY | $29,650 | $25,084 | $27,727 |
| TX | $30,800 | $26,928 | $27,711 |
| MS | $28,640 | $24,139 | $27,653 |
| WV | $28,950 | $24,747 | $27,567 |
| PA | $31,200 | $26,291 | $26,965 |
| GA | $30,840 | $26,020 | $26,908 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for retail salespersons, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $35,410 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- Take-home figures for retail 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 Washington, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $33,966.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for retail salespersons. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits Georgia, on $26,908.
- All wage figures for retail salespersons are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $35,410. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- Take-home calculations for retail 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 $33,966, in Washington. 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 results for retail salespersons rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; Georgia anchors the distribution at $26,908. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.