Sales Managers 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 ($66,910) to the 90th ($239,200 or more). 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

The occupation employed 603,710 people in May 2024, 0.39% of every job BLS counted. California is the largest employer at 108,120 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 36.8% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in California, whose location quotient of 1.53 says this work is 1.53 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

BLS top-codes or suppresses part of this occupation's national ladder, so the published center is the median of $138,060 and the mean of $160,930. The state table below is the more useful negotiating document: it shows how far the same job title travels across the 51 states with published estimates.

Pay by state

The state spread for Sales Managers runs from the $214,350 median in New York down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (108,120 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Sales Managers stands number 62 by employment and number 45 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Management Occupations, the group median wage is $106,980 across 38 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 29% more than its group median, and it supplies 5.5% of the group's 10,966,830 jobs. In 14 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $138,060, 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 40,990 jobs, 6.8% of the national total. Employment rank and pay rank are different lists: the second table re-sorts metros with at least 500 jobs in this occupation by mean pay, the floor keeping a handful of workers from posing as a market.

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, $106,850 a year, against $244,410 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. That is the metro effect in one line: identical job title, materially different pay, decided mostly by which labor market the job sits in.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $138,060 works out to $11,505 a month before taxes, $5,310 per biweekly paycheck, and $2,655 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($95,910) to the 75th ($201,490) is worth $105,580 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $151,866 would sit between the median ($138,060) and the 75th percentile ($201,490), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $95,910, is $42,150 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Management Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Human Resources Managers, Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers, Chief Executives, Architectural and Engineering Managers, Social and Community Service Managers, Education Administrators, Postsecondary. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.