Occupation / job
Cashiers
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
Cashiers pays $32,880 against $50,020 for the typical American job — $17,140 a year, or $8.24 an hour, of difference. A gap that size has to be worth something to you that is not money, and it has to keep being worth it.
With 3,089,410 employed, this is one of the biggest occupations in the country. Work at this scale is always available and rarely scarce, and the wage on this page is what that combination produces.
Retail sales suits people who are comfortable on their feet talking to strangers all day, and who want work that can be started without a formal qualification.
How long it takes to become one of the 3,089,410 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
A quarter of Cashiers earn under $28,720 and a quarter over $36,330: 1.3x, and $7,610 between the ends. That is a narrow band — enough room to be paid better than average, not enough for the occupation to be a route to a materially different income.
The bottom quarter of Cashiers earns under $28,720 — $21,300 below the $50,020 national midpoint, or $13.80 an hour. A floor that low means the occupation cannot be judged on its median alone; a quarter of the people in it are somewhere else entirely.
Avoid it if you need scheduled hours; retail rosters are set late and change often.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 3,089,410 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
A 1.3x spread means the top quarter of Cashiers is not doing a different job from the bottom quarter, just a slightly better-paid version of the same one. Between $28,720 and $36,330 is the whole of the negotiation.
Put in money rather than ratios: $28,720 at the 25th percentile, $32,880 at the midpoint, $36,330 at the 75th. $7,610 separates the quarter of Cashiers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $36,330, the 75th percentile, is worth $3,450 a year more than the $32,880 midpoint and $7,610 more than the $28,720 a quarter of Cashiers settle for.
There is $4,160 between $28,720 and $32,880, and $3,450 between $32,880 and $36,330. The lower half of the range is marginally the longer one — worth knowing if you would be entering Cashiers at the bottom of it.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $15.80 at the midpoint for Cashiers, $13.80 at the 25th percentile and $17.46 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $32,880 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 $32,880 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Cashiers, 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