Postal Service Mail Carriers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Postal Service Mail Carriers worker at that point in the distribution, so $75,300 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

BLS counted 336,040 Postal Service Mail Carriers jobs in May 2024, which is 0.22% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Mississippi, where the location quotient is 1.36, meaning the occupation holds 1.36 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 33,150 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 24.3% of the national total.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $34,490 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($76,880) is 1.8 times the 10th percentile ($42,390), a gap of $34,490 a year. The mean of $59,880 sitting above the median of $57,490 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

South Dakota posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $59,320, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Postal Service Mail Carriers stands number 110 by employment and number 447 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Office and Administrative Support Occupations, the group median wage is $47,850 across 54 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 20% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.8% of the group's 18,218,060 jobs. In 19 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $57,490, 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 20,570 jobs, 6.1% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 386 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, Columbia, SC posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $57,370 a year, against $62,970 in McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX. 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

Budget arithmetic on the median: $4,791 a month before tax, $2,211 biweekly, $1,106 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($46,030) to the 75th ($75,300) is worth $29,270 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $63,239 would sit between the median ($57,490) and the 75th percentile ($75,300), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $46,030, is $11,460 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Office and Administrative Support Occupations

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Dispatchers, Except Police, Fire, and Ambulance, Office and Administrative Support Workers, All Other, Loan Interviewers and Clerks, Court, Municipal, and License Clerks, Bill and Account Collectors, Interviewers, Except Eligibility and Loan. The full directory is on the Careers hub.