Occupation / job
Counter and Rental Clerks
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
At $41,300 against $50,020, this pays $726 a month less than the typical American job. Below the midpoint but within reach of it: the spread and the floor below decide whether that description flatters Counter and Rental Clerks or not.
This is a large occupation: 400,810 people work as Counter and Rental Clerks. Large occupations hire continuously and replace continuously, and the pay reflects both facts.
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 400,810 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 Counter and Rental Clerks earn under $35,630 and a quarter over $50,190 — 1.4x, or $14,560 apart. Narrow spreads usually mean a pay schedule, which is stability bought at the price of upside.
A quarter of Counter and Rental Clerks earn under $35,630, which is $14,390 short of the $50,020 national midpoint. Assume you start there and check whether the arithmetic still works.
Avoid it if you need scheduled hours; retail rosters are set late and change often.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 400,810 people employed as Counter and Rental Clerks; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
The quarters are $35,630 and $50,190, a ratio of 1.4x. In a distribution this narrow, the biggest single lever on your pay in Counter and Rental Clerks is the cost of living where you do it.
In cash terms the middle half of Counter and Rental Clerks runs $35,630 to $50,190 — $14,560 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $41,300.
The 75th percentile is $50,190. Reaching it from the $41,300 midpoint is $8,890 a year; reaching it from the $35,630 that the bottom quarter of Counter and Rental Clerks earn is $14,560.
It is $5,670 from $41,300 down to $35,630 but $8,890 up to $50,190. When a range leans this far upward, the interesting question is what puts someone in the top half, because the money is disproportionately there.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $17.12 at the bottom quarter, $19.85 at the midpoint, $24.12 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
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Counter and Rental Clerks. The self-employed are excluded, so $41,300 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $41,300 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else