Occupation / job
Cargo and Freight Agents
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
With a $52,260 median against a $50,020 national one, Cargo and Freight Agents is an average-paying occupation by construction — $186 a month either way. What separates it from the alternatives is not on this line.
With 97,670 in the occupation, Cargo and Freight Agents is a big field with a visible internal market. Big fields reward moving: the pay you can negotiate on arrival usually beats what the annual review will give you for staying.
These roles suit people who like solving a logistics puzzle that changes every hour, and who can stay calm while several people wait on the answer.
How long it takes to become one of the 97,670 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.
Who should not do this
The middle half runs $45,710 to $63,390 — $1,473 a month between the quarters, a 1.4x ratio. Spreads this narrow are usually set by a grade or a scale, so the negotiation you are imagining probably is not available.
The bottom quarter of Cargo and Freight Agents earns under $45,710, which is within $4,310 of the $50,020 typical American job. An occupation whose 25th percentile is level with the national middle has an unusually forgiving downside.
Avoid it if you dislike being interrupted — the whole job is interruption, prioritised in real time.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 97,670 figure counts people already working as Cargo and Freight Agents, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
Top quarter to bottom quarter is 1.4x. In a band that narrow, $52,260 is a genuinely representative number for Cargo and Freight Agents and the main variable left is where you live.
Put in money rather than ratios: $45,710 at the 25th percentile, $52,260 at the midpoint, $63,390 at the 75th. $17,680 separates the quarter of Cargo and Freight Agents at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $63,390, the 75th percentile, is worth $11,130 a year more than the $52,260 midpoint and $17,680 more than the $45,710 a quarter of Cargo and Freight Agents settle for.
The distance from the midpoint up to $63,390 is $11,130 — well over the $6,550 down to $45,710. Distributions leaning this way mean the median understates what the upper half of Cargo and Freight Agents earns, and half the field is in that upper half.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $21.97 at the bottom quarter, $25.12 at the midpoint, $30.47 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $52,260 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
The hourly number on this page is $52,260 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Cargo and Freight Agents, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else