Cashiers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Cashiers worker at that point in the distribution, so $35,410 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 3,148,030, or 2.04% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 349,300 jobs; the top three states sum to 25.8% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: South Dakota posts a location quotient of 1.40, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

One in ten workers in this field earns $23,070 or less, and one in ten earns $38,220 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 1.7 to 1 and the annual gap is $15,150. The mean ($31,810) versus median ($31,190) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts California first at 349,300 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, District of Columbia would lead at $37,540. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Cashiers stands number 6 by employment and number 820 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Sales and Related Occupations, the group median wage is $56,320 across 22 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 45% less than its group median, and it supplies 23.6% of the group's 13,351,670 jobs. In 18 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $31,190, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 163,130 jobs, 5.2% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Aguadilla, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $21,120 a year, against $43,170 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $31,190 a year is $2,599 a month gross, $1,200 every two weeks, $600 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($27,780) to the 75th ($35,410) is worth $7,630 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $2,599 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $34,309 would sit between the median ($31,190) and the 75th percentile ($35,410), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $27,780, is $3,410 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Sales and Related Occupations

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Demonstrators and Product Promoters, Travel Agents, Sales Engineers, Real Estate Brokers, Gambling Change Persons and Booth Cashiers, Models. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.