Sales Associate Salary 2026,
What Sales Associates Actually Earn

How much do sales associates make in 2026?

Sales associates are counted in the BLS retail salespersons series: OEWS May 2025 puts the SOC 41-2031 national median at $35,410 a year ($17.03 an hour), with the bottom 10% near $27,210 and the top 10% at $47,890. For this role the hourly figure is more meaningful than the annual one, and it is worth explaining why. A large share of retail sales associate positions are part-time by design, and hours are frequently variable — scheduled week to week against forecast footfall, cut in slow periods and extended through peak trading. The annual figures above describe full-time-equivalent earnings, so an associate working twenty-five hours a week earns well below them regardless of the hourly rate. That variability, rather than the rate itself, is the defining economic feature of the job and the reason retail turnover is so high. Beyond hours, pay varies by category and commission structure exactly as it does across the wider series: commissioned selling in furniture, jewellery and electronics reaches the upper band, general merchandise sits near the middle and entry positions track statutory minimums. Retailers that have moved toward stable scheduling and guaranteed minimum hours have measurably better retention, and those practices are worth checking before accepting a role. Employment is projected to change by -0.5% through 2034 with roughly 555,800 openings a year. → Full sales associate career guide, career path, credentials & placement →

Note: $35,410 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 41-2031, 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 →