Travel Agents Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Travel Agents worker at that point in the distribution, so $60,880 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 59,150 Travel Agents jobs in May 2024, which is 0.04% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Washington, where the location quotient is 2.97, meaning the occupation holds 2.97 times its national share of local jobs. Florida employs the most people outright, 9,730 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 33.0% of the national total.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $74,160, which is 2.2 times the $33,280 at the 10th, a difference of $40,880 annually. Because the mean wage ($52,690) sits above the median ($48,450), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

District of Columbia posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $63,770, and Florida the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Travel Agents stands number 360 by employment and number 561 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 14% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.4% of the group's 13,351,670 jobs. In 20 of the 49 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $48,450, 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

Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL is the largest metro employer with 4,480 jobs, 7.6% of the national total. The first table ranks metros by employment; the second ranks them by mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs in the occupation, because a three-person metro can top a pay table by accident.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $44,830 a year, against $61,140 in Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA. A gap that size between two metro labor markets is why the same occupation title can fund two very different budgets in two different cities.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $48,450 works out to $4,038 a month before taxes, $1,863 per biweekly paycheck, and $932 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($38,760) to the 75th ($60,880) is worth $22,120 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 $53,295 would sit between the median ($48,450) and the 75th percentile ($60,880), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $38,760, is $9,690 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

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Telemarketers, Demonstrators and Product Promoters, Sales Engineers, Real Estate Brokers, Gambling Change Persons and Booth Cashiers, Models. The full directory is on the Careers hub.