May 4, 2009 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Wages of workers in largest occupations, May 2008

The 2 largest occupations in the U.S., retail salespersons and cashiers—both of which had employment of more than 3.0 million workers in May 2008—had mean annual wages of $25,050 and $18,880, respectively.

Mean annual wages of occupations with employment over 2 million, May 2008
[Chart data—TXT]

Examples of other occupations with employment of more than 2.0 million workers include office clerks, general, (mean annual wages: $26,830) and combined food preparation and serving workers, including fast food ($17,400).

Among the occupations with employment of more than 2.0 million, registered nurses had mean annual wages ($65,130) that were at least twice as high as those of the other occupations.

These data are from the Occupational Employment Statistics program. To learn more, see "Occupational Employment and Wages, 2008" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL 09-0457.