Occupation / job
Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, 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
$104,920 against a $50,020 national midpoint is 110% more, or $26.39 an hour. Almost nothing pays this much more without a long, expensive or restricted route in — read that route before reading the number again.
This is a large occupation: 284,800 people work as Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Products. Large occupations hire continuously and replace continuously, and the pay reflects both facts.
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 284,800 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
At 2.1x, from $75,030 to $158,160, the two halves of Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Products are not really doing the same job. $6,927 a month separates them, and something other than the title explains it.
The bottom quarter of this field earns $75,030 — $36.07 an hour, $25,010 above the $50,020 national midpoint. When even the worst-paid quarter of Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Products is this far ahead, the barrier to entry is doing the work of keeping it there.
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 284,800 figure counts people already working as Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, 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
From $75,030 to $158,160 at 2.1x: something inside this occupation sorts people a long way apart. Identifying what it is — sector, employer, credential — is worth more than any general advice about Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Products.
Put in money rather than ratios: $75,030 at the 25th percentile, $104,920 at the midpoint, $158,160 at the 75th. $83,130 separates the quarter of Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Products at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $158,160, the 75th percentile, is worth $53,240 a year more than the $104,920 midpoint and $83,130 more than the $75,030 a quarter of Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Products settle for.
It is $29,890 from $104,920 down to $75,030 but $53,240 up to $158,160. When a range leans this far upward, the interesting question is what puts someone in the top half, because the money is disproportionately there.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Products is $50.44 an hour. The quarters sit at $36.07 and $76.03, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $104,920 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.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Products, the hourly figure is $104,920 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else