Retail Buyer Salary 2026,
What Retail Buyers Actually Earn

How much do retail buyers make in 2026?

Retail buyers are counted in the BLS buyers and purchasing agents series: OEWS May 2025 gives the SOC 13-1020 national median as $77,710 a year ($37.36 an hour), with the bottom 10% near $48,380 and the top 10% at $128,870. That series covers procurement across industries as well as retail merchandise buying, so it describes the buying profession broadly. Retail buying sits across the band with position determined mainly by the size and risk of the category owned. Assistant buyers running reorders and administration sit low; buyers owning a category's range, pricing and margin sit around the median; and senior buyers or divisional merchandise managers with responsibility for multi-million dollar categories, supplier negotiation and own-brand development sit well above it. The economics of the job are worth stating plainly: retail buying is a forecasting role with financial consequences. A buyer commits inventory months ahead of demand, and errors show up as markdowns that destroy margin or as lost sales from being out of stock. That is why buyers are measured on sell-through, margin achieved after markdown and inventory turn rather than on purchase price alone. Fashion and seasonal categories carry the most risk and the most volatility; replenishment categories are steadier. Employment is projected to grow 5.8% through 2034 with roughly 52,200 openings a year. → Full retail buyer career guide, career path, credentials & placement →

Note: $77,710 blends every experience level and every setting in this occupation. For pay by level alone, see Pay by Level below.

Published (BLS): BLS OEWS May 2025, SOC 13-1020, United States national estimate. Public, methodologically rigorous, but sampled on a rolling 3-year basis and published ~10 months after collection — so it reflects wages that are already 1–2 years old by the time you read them.

Level and certification medians: distributed across the published BLS percentile range for this SOC code (P10 through P90) according to the credential tiers this occupation actually hires at. They are modeled reference points, not separately surveyed wages.

State and metro figures: modeled — the BLS national median multiplied by the GlobalCybers state wage index, and for metros by the published metro index for that state. They are estimates of local pay, not BLS state or metropolitan-area observations, and are labelled as modeled in the tables below.

No verified placement sample:GlobalCybers does not yet publish a placement median for this role, so no "verified" figure appears anywhere on this page.

Full site methodology & data sources →