Occupation / job
Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products
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 $72,080 against a $50,020 midpoint, Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products pays $22,060 a year more than the typical American job — $10.60 an hour. Nothing pays that much more for free, and the thing it is paid for is what you should be reading about.
1,238,190 people are employed as Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products, which puts it among the largest occupations in the United States. At this scale you are never short of a vacancy and never scarce, and the second fact is why the first one is cheap.
Wholesale and manufacturing sales suit people who can learn a product deeply and hold a territory over years — the relationships outlast any single quarter.
How long it takes to become one of the 1,238,190 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 earn under $50,470, a quarter over $99,640: $4,097 a month between them at a 2.0x ratio. Planning around the midpoint of a spread this wide is planning around a number very few people in Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products actually earn.
Even the 25th percentile pays $50,470, $450 more than the $50,020 typical American job and $24.26 an hour. The floor, not the median, is the strongest financial argument for Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products.
Avoid it if travel and time away from home would not fit the rest of your life; the territory has to be covered.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 1,238,190 figure counts people already working as Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products, 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
A 2.0x ratio says the label covers materially different work. Somewhere between $50,470 and $99,640, employer type, sub-speciality or credential is doing the sorting that the job title is not.
The middle half of this field earns between $50,470 and $99,640. That is $49,170 of range, with $72,080 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Between $50,470 and $99,640 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $72,080. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $27,560; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $49,170.
From $72,080 it is $21,610 down to the bottom quarter and $27,560 up to the top. The upper half of the range is the longer one, which is the ordinary shape for work where experience compounds.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products is $34.65 an hour. The quarters sit at $24.26 and $47.90, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $72,080 describes them.
The hourly number on this page is $72,080 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products, 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