Retail Salespersons Average Salary in United States
$37,302 average · $37,310 median · BLS OEWS 2025
SOC Code: 41-2031What is this?
Professional in retail salespersons
How much do Retail Salespersons make in United States?
The average retail salespersons salary in United States is $37,302 per year, with a median of $37,310. That works out to about $17.93 per hour on average. BLS counts roughly 19,723,450 retail salespersons jobs in United States.
Mean and median are close, so pay is relatively concentrated around $37,310. Entry-level roles (10th percentile) report about $34,300; experienced workers at the 90th percentile report about $39,580 — a 15% spread from bottom to top. Figures are employer-reported wages from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program — not self-reported survey averages — so they are the right baseline for offers, raises, and relocation decisions in this market.
How Sales and Related Careers Are Structured
Sales has the widest internal pay spread of any major group because it contains two different economies under one label: hourly retail sales at the bottom of the wage distribution, and commissioned B2B, technical, and financial sales reaching into the top percentiles. Group-level averages are nearly meaningless here; the occupation-level detail is everything.
The wage tables and percentile chart on this page show how retail salespersons pay is distributed in United States specifically — and because state-level wages for the same occupation routinely differ by 30% or more, the local figures here are the ones that matter for offers, raises, and relocation decisions in this market.
What Moves Pay in This Field
What is sold determines what is earned. Moving from retail to business-to-business sales, and from low-ticket to high-ticket products, moves workers across the entire distribution — often with no additional formal education. Within commissioned roles, the survey records actual earnings including commission, so the percentile spread on this page honestly reflects the performance spread among salespeople.
Retail entry is immediate; B2B and technical sales hire from retail, from customer service, and from industry technical roles. Sales is the most credential-light path to a top-quartile income in the American labor market, and the data shows it — but the same percentiles show the wide bottom that makes it a performance-priced career rather than a guaranteed one.
New to reading wage distributions? Our guide to salary percentiles explains how to place yourself on the chart above, and the negotiation playbook shows how to use these numbers in an actual conversation.
What Do Retail Salespersons Do?
Professional in retail salespersons
Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) Code: 41-2031
Retail Salespersons pay in United States
In United States, retail salespersons report a median of $37,310 and an average of $37,302 (about $17.93/hour) across roughly 19,723,450 jobs. The local pay band runs from about $34,300 at the 10th percentile to $39,580 at the 90th.
National figures average across high-cost coastal metros and lower-cost inland markets, so individual state pages on Wage Atlas are usually the better reference for a specific offer.
Income reality check
The median salary for Retail Salespersons in United States of $37,310 falls in the Stably paid band of this framework - roughly ~12% of the U.S. population and ~15% of the global population sit in this band.
Illustrative relative standing for education only - this ladder is a simplified framework, not an official Census, BLS, or World Bank statistical series. Salary figures on Wage Atlas come from official BLS OEWS data.
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Job Outlook 2023-2033
Official BLS Employment Projections for Retail Salespersons
Skills & What You Do
These occupations usually require a high school diploma
- Greet customers and assist with product selection
- Process sales transactions
- Maintain knowledge of products and promotions
- Handle returns and customer questions
Top Industries for Retail Salespersons
| $36,636 | $35,373 | $18 | 5,069,100 |
Related Occupations
| $37,964 | $37,590 | $18 | 33,310,030 | |
SOC: 41-2030 • 88% match | $37,302 | $37,310 | $18 | 19,723,450 |
SOC: 31-1120 • 93% match | $36,156 | $36,010 | $17 | 48,535,960 |
SOC: 35-3000 • 86% match | $36,004 | $35,680 | $17 | 38,643,470 |
| Find Food and Beverage Serving Workers Jobs | ||||
| $33,250 | $33,190 | $16 | 15,896,020 | |
| $33,202 | $33,180 | $16 | 15,770,510 | |
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Retail Salespersons in Other States
Compare salaries for this occupation across different states:
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Viewing: Retail Salespersons (SOC: 41-2031)
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