---
title: "Purchasing Agent, Except Wholesale, Retail, and Farm Products"
description: "Purchase machinery, equipment, tools, parts, supplies, or services necessary for the operation of an establishment. Purchase raw or semifinished…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/purchasing-agent"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T15:56:39.581Z"
---

# Purchasing Agent, Except Wholesale, Retail, and Farm Products

**Category:** Business and Financial Operations · **SOC code:** 13-1023 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 13-1023.00

Purchase machinery, equipment, tools, parts, supplies, or services necessary for the operation of an establishment. Purchase raw or semifinished materials for manufacturing. May negotiate contracts.

Also advertised as: Buyer; Contract Administrator (Contract Admin); Procurement and Contracting Administrator (Procurement and Contracting Admin); Procurement and Contracting Buyer; Procurement Official; Procurement Specialist; Purchasing Administrator (Purchasing Admin); Purchasing Agent.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $77,710 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $37.36/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $48,380 to $128,870, with the middle half between $60,800 and $100,820
- **Total US employment:** 491,430
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +5.8% over 2024–2034 (BLS EP, 2024–2034)
- **Annual job openings:** 52,200 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 23/100 — 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 491,430 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $48,380 |
| 25th | $60,800 |
| 50th (median) | $77,710 |
| 75th | $100,820 |
| 90th | $128,870 |
| Mean (average) | $83,770 |

### 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DC | $124,090 | $112,911 | 1,880 |
| NJ | $93,250 | $85,704 | 12,180 |
| MD | $90,900 | $86,605 | 8,900 |
| VA | $89,210 | $88,236 | 22,120 |
| RI | $86,240 | $84,318 | Not published by BLS |
| MA | $85,970 | $81,290 | 12,820 |
| WA | $85,130 | $79,551 | 15,400 |
| CO | $83,590 | $81,114 | 10,080 |
| AK | $83,460 | $81,537 | 890 |
| CT | $83,030 | $80,137 | 5,530 |
| DE | $82,920 | $83,080 | 1,400 |
| CA | $82,720 | $74,711 | 48,010 |
| MN | $80,370 | $81,494 | 10,960 |
| NY | $79,460 | $73,628 | 31,240 |
| IL | $78,470 | $78,503 | 19,660 |

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

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 522,200 in the 2024–2034 base year to 552,300 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 30,100 jobs, or +5.8%. Faster than average: 5.8% against 3.1% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 52,200 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:** Moderate-term on-the-job training.

### 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 | 65.0% |
| High School Diploma | 15.0% |
| Associate's Degree (or other 2-year degree) | 10.0% |
| Post-Baccalaureate Certificate | 10.0% |

## What the work involves

- Monitor and follow applicable laws and regulations.
- Purchase the highest quality merchandise at the lowest possible price and in correct amounts.
- Formulate policies and procedures for bid proposals and procurement of goods and services.
- Prepare purchase orders, solicit bid proposals, and review requisitions for goods and services.
- Write and review product specifications, maintaining a working technical knowledge of the goods or services to be purchased.
- Analyze price proposals, financial reports, and other data and information to determine reasonable prices.
- Evaluate and monitor contract performance to ensure compliance with contractual obligations and to determine need for changes.
- Negotiate, renegotiate, and administer contracts with suppliers, vendors, and other representatives.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.8 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.

- Negotiation — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Management of Financial Resources — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- English Language — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Law and Government — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administrative — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Written Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral 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
- Written Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.9 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), Realistic (R).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| C — Conventional | 5.65 |
| E — Enterprising | 5.09 |
| R — Realistic | 3.50 |
| S — Social | 1.93 |
| I — Investigative | 1.82 |
| A — Artistic | 1.19 |

### 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 | 89.3 |
| ISTJ | 79.3 |
| ESFJ | 76.6 |
| ISFJ | 71.8 |
| ENTJ | 63.9 |

Best-fitting types: ESTJ.

## Related occupations

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

- [Procurement Clerk](https://nuecareer.com/careers/procurement-clerk) — median $50,580
- [Purchasing Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/purchasing-manager) — median $148,080
- [Wholesale and Retail Buyer, Except Farm Products](https://nuecareer.com/careers/wholesale-and-retail-buyer) — median $77,710
- [Buyer and Purchasing Agent, Farm Products](https://nuecareer.com/careers/buyer-and-purchasing-agent-farm-products) — median $77,710
- [Logistics Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/logistics-analyst) — median $82,320
- [Logistician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/logistician) — median $82,320
- [Security, Commodity, and Financial Services Sales Agent](https://nuecareer.com/careers/security-commodity-and-financial-services-sales-agent) — median $78,660
- [Supply Chain Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/supply-chain-manager) — median $107,230
- [Sales Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/sales-manager) — median $148,270
- [Cost Estimator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cost-estimator) — median $78,740

## 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/purchasing-agent