Counter and Rental Clerks Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($28,580) to the 90th ($62,030). BLS suppresses cells that fail its reliability rules (n/p here) and caps the highest wages at $239,200+ a year or $115.00+ an hour; in this ladder that top code appears at the very top rows only.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 398,620 Counter and Rental Clerks jobs in May 2024, which is 0.26% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Colorado, where the location quotient is 1.96, meaning the occupation holds 1.96 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 69,870 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 34.3% of the national total.

One in ten workers in this field earns $28,580 or less, and one in ten earns $62,030 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.2 to 1 and the annual gap is $33,450. The mean ($43,700) versus median ($38,540) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

The state spread for Counter and Rental Clerks runs from the $49,130 median in District of Columbia down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (69,870 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Counter and Rental Clerks stands number 90 by employment and number 726 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 32% less than its group median, and it supplies 3.0% of the group's 13,351,670 jobs. In 21 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $38,540, 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

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA is the largest metro employer with 26,410 jobs, 6.6% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 389 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $26,500 a year, against $54,560 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $38,540 a year is $3,212 a month gross, $1,482 every two weeks, $741 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($34,200) to the 75th ($48,290) is worth $14,090 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 $3,212 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 $42,394 would sit between the median ($38,540) and the 75th percentile ($48,290), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $34,200, is $4,340 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

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Advertising Sales Agents, Telemarketers, Demonstrators and Product Promoters, Travel Agents, Sales Engineers, Real Estate Brokers. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.