---
title: "Purchasing Manager"
description: "Plan, direct, or coordinate the activities of buyers, purchasing officers, and related workers involved in purchasing materials, products, and services.…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/purchasing-manager"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Purchasing Manager

**Category:** Management · **SOC code:** 11-3061 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 11-3061.00

Plan, direct, or coordinate the activities of buyers, purchasing officers, and related workers involved in purchasing materials, products, and services. Includes wholesale or retail trade merchandising managers and procurement managers.

Also advertised as: Category Purchasing Manager; Commodity Manager; Materials Director; Materials Manager; Procurement Director; Procurement Manager; Purchasing Director; Purchasing Manager.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $148,080 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $71.19/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $92,490 to $223,280, with the middle half between $115,550 and $182,270
- **Total US employment:** 84,320
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +4.0% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 6,400 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 84,320 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $92,490 |
| 25th | $115,550 |
| 50th (median) | $148,080 |
| 75th | $182,270 |
| 90th | $223,280 |
| Mean (average) | $156,360 |

### 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 | $175,720 | $159,889 | 1,110 |
| NJ | $174,520 | $160,397 | 3,430 |
| CO | $171,250 | $166,178 | 1,320 |
| MA | $170,750 | $161,455 | 2,160 |
| NY | $166,300 | $154,094 | 6,930 |
| VA | $166,230 | $164,415 | 3,540 |
| NH | $162,900 | $156,387 | 540 |
| WA | $162,730 | $152,066 | 1,770 |
| MD | $161,470 | $153,841 | 2,380 |
| KS | $159,850 | $177,477 | 920 |
| CA | $159,830 | $144,355 | 7,470 |
| AR | $156,450 | $179,958 | 930 |
| GA | $155,360 | $161,341 | 3,430 |
| IL | $153,370 | $153,434 | 4,160 |
| WV | $147,220 | $164,497 | 180 |

37 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 52 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/purchasing-manager/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/purchasing-manager.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 88,300 in the 2025–2035 base year to 91,800 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 3,500 jobs, or +4.0%. About as fast as average: 4.0% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 6,400 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## 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:** 5 years or more.
- **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 | 52.6% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 15.8% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 10.5% |
| Master's Degree | 10.5% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 5.3% |
| Some College Courses | 5.3% |

## What the work involves

- Develop and implement purchasing and contract management instructions, policies, and procedures.
- Locate vendors of materials, equipment or supplies, and interview them to determine product availability and terms of sales.
- Direct and coordinate activities of personnel engaged in buying, selling, and distributing materials, equipment, machinery, and supplies.
- Develop cost reduction strategies and savings plans.
- Control purchasing department budgets.
- Analyze market and delivery systems to assess present and future material availability.
- Prepare bid awards requiring board approval.
- Interview and hire staff, and oversee staff training.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.1 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.

- Management of Personnel Resources — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Administration and Management — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Law and Government — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Economics and Accounting — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- 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 Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Fluency of Ideas — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Recognition — 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 Enterprising (E), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| E — Enterprising | 7.00 |
| C — Conventional | 5.98 |
| S — Social | 2.70 |
| R — Realistic | 2.49 |
| I — Investigative | 1.77 |
| A — Artistic | 1.20 |

### 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 | 85.1 |
| ESFJ | 80.2 |
| ENTJ | 68.1 |
| ISTJ | 66.1 |
| ISFJ | 64.6 |

Best-fitting types: ESTJ, ESFJ.

## 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 Agent, Except Wholesale, Retail, and Farm Products](https://nuecareer.com/careers/purchasing-agent) — median $77,710
- [Wholesale and Retail Buyer, Except Farm Products](https://nuecareer.com/careers/wholesale-and-retail-buyer) — median $77,710
- [Logistics Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/logistics-analyst) — median $82,320
- [Logistician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/logistician) — median $82,320
- [Supply Chain Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/supply-chain-manager) — median $107,230
- [Sales Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/sales-manager) — median $148,270
- [Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/transportation-storage-and-distribution-manager) — median $107,230
- [Marketing Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/marketing-manager) — median $166,790
- [Management Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/management-analyst) — median $101,860

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 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, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025–2035 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 31.0 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-manager