---
title: "Logistician"
description: "Analyze and coordinate the ongoing logistical functions of a firm or organization. Responsible for the entire life cycle of a product, including…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/logistician"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T15:56:39.581Z"
---

# Logistician

**Category:** Business and Financial Operations · **SOC code:** 13-1081 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 13-1081.00

Analyze and coordinate the ongoing logistical functions of a firm or organization. Responsible for the entire life cycle of a product, including acquisition, distribution, internal allocation, delivery, and final disposal of resources.

Also advertised as: Client Services Administrator; Logistician; Production Planner; Supply Management Specialist.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $82,320 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $39.58/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $50,890 to $133,160, with the middle half between $64,440 and $106,190
- **Total US employment:** 251,040
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +16.7% over 2024–2034 (BLS EP, 2024–2034)
- **Annual job openings:** 26,400 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 29/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 251,040 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $50,890 |
| 25th | $64,440 |
| 50th (median) | $82,320 |
| 75th | $106,190 |
| 90th | $133,160 |
| Mean (average) | $89,730 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| WA | $107,250 | $100,221 | 5,670 |
| DC | $104,770 | $95,331 | 1,350 |
| MD | $102,700 | $97,848 | 6,840 |
| MA | $100,360 | $94,897 | 5,250 |
| HI | $100,340 | $91,259 | 570 |
| VA | $98,920 | $97,840 | 10,540 |
| AL | $98,450 | $110,838 | 5,190 |
| NM | $98,430 | $106,743 | 850 |
| CO | $96,090 | $93,244 | 4,490 |
| DE | $96,090 | $96,275 | 520 |
| CA | $92,890 | $83,896 | 32,940 |
| NJ | $92,280 | $84,812 | 6,280 |
| NY | $88,240 | $81,764 | 6,930 |
| AK | $87,280 | $85,269 | 530 |
| OK | $86,600 | $98,585 | 3,830 |

39 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 54 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/logistician/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/logistician.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 241,000 in the 2024–2034 base year to 281,300 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 40,300 jobs, or +16.7%. Much faster than average: 16.7% against 3.1% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 26,400 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2024–2034.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 75.0% |
| High School Diploma | 8.3% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 8.3% |
| Some College Courses | 8.3% |

## What the work involves

- Maintain and develop positive business relationships with a customer's key personnel involved in, or directly relevant to, a logistics activity.
- Develop an understanding of customers' needs and take actions to ensure that such needs are met.
- Review logistics performance with customers against targets, benchmarks, and service agreements.
- Report project plans, progress, and results.
- Stay informed of logistics technology advances and apply appropriate technology to improve logistics processes.
- Provide project management services, including the provision and analysis of technical data.
- Manage subcontractor activities, reviewing proposals, developing performance specifications, and serving as liaisons between subcontractors and organizations.
- Develop proposals that include documentation for estimates.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Critical Thinking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Coordination — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Transportation — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Conventional (C), Enterprising (E), Investigative (I).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| C — Conventional | 5.44 |
| E — Enterprising | 5.02 |
| I — Investigative | 3.81 |
| R — Realistic | 2.35 |
| S — Social | 2.33 |
| A — Artistic | 1.10 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ESTJ | 83.1 |
| ISTJ | 76.0 |
| ESFJ | 69.1 |
| ENTJ | 67.9 |
| ISFJ | 65.5 |

Best-fitting types: ESTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Logistics Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/logistics-analyst) — median $82,320
- [Supply Chain Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/supply-chain-manager) — median $107,230
- [Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/transportation-storage-and-distribution-manager) — median $107,230
- [Logistics Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/logistics-engineer) — median $82,320
- [Project Management Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/project-management-specialist) — median $102,320
- [Purchasing Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/purchasing-manager) — median $148,080
- [Management Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/management-analyst) — median $101,860
- [Production, Planning, and Expediting Clerk](https://nuecareer.com/careers/production-planning-and-expediting-clerk) — median $59,650
- [Industrial Production Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/industrial-production-manager) — median $126,060
- [Purchasing Agent, Except Wholesale, Retail, and Farm Products](https://nuecareer.com/careers/purchasing-agent) — median $77,710

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 30.3 Database, May 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2024–2034. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024–2034 edition. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 30.3 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/logistician