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Marketing & Sales

National Career Cluster · the map of work

Marketing & Sales is one of the 14 national career clusters — the U.S. Department of Education's map that divides the whole world of work into broad families, each crosswalked to occupations, education programs, and industries. This cluster spans 27 occupations across 4 sub-clusters, employing about 17,201,220 workers, with a median wage of $66,260.

What's in this cluster

A career cluster is a navigational grouping, not a measured score. The counts below come from the framework's official crosswalk; employment and pay are aggregated from BLS OEWS (national, cross-industry, May 2024) across the occupations in the cluster.

27 occupations
4 sub-clusters
17,201,220 workers (BLS)
$66,260 median pay
54 education programs

Across occupations with wage data, the middle range (25th–75th percentile of occupation medians) runs $40,240 – $102,495. This describes the cluster, not any one job or person.

Sub-clusters

The framework splits each cluster into sub-clusters — tighter families of related work. The count is the number of occupations the crosswalk places in each.

Sub-cluster Occupations
Retail & Customer Experience 10
Strategic Sales 8
Market Research, Analytics, & Ethics 5
Marketing & Advertising 4

Largest occupations in this cluster

Exposure quadrant: AI task-overlap percentile vs Median pay AI task-overlap (horizontal) versus median pay (vertical), each as a percentile across all scored occupations, for 25 occupations in Marketing & Sales. Overlap measures shared tasks with AI, not automation. Lower overlap · higher pay Higher overlap · higher pay Higher overlap · lower pay Lower overlap · lower pay Computer, Automated Teller, and Office Machine Repairers Floral Designers Cashiers Photographers Door-to-Door Sales Workers, News and Street Vendors, and Related Workers Sales Managers First-Line Supervisors of Non-Retail Sales Workers Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Products Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products Advertising Sales Agents Data Scientists Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists Statisticians AI task-overlap percentile → ↑ Median pay
The largest occupations in this cluster with both an AI task-overlap score and a wage, plotted by task-overlap percentile (horizontal) and median-pay percentile (vertical). Overlap measures shared tasks with AI, not automation.

Occupations in this cluster with the most workers nationally (BLS OEWS, May 2024), each linked to its full profile. Employment and pay describe the occupation, not an individual.

Occupation Workers Median pay
Retail Salespersons 3,800,250 $34,580
Cashiers 3,148,030 $31,190
Customer Service Representatives 2,725,930 $42,830
Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products 1,266,860 $66,780
Sales Representatives of Services, Except Advertising, Insurance, Financial Services, and Travel 1,189,330 $66,260
First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers 1,113,160 $47,320
Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists 861,140 $76,950
Sales Managers 603,710 $138,060
Buyers and Purchasing Agents 486,900 $75,650
Marketing Managers 384,980 $161,030
Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Products 293,930 $100,070
Parts Salespersons 265,060 $37,440
Data Scientists 233,440 $112,590
First-Line Supervisors of Non-Retail Sales Workers 219,010 $84,130
Sales and Related Workers, All Other 99,070 $46,370
Advertising Sales Agents 97,470 $61,460
Computer, Automated Teller, and Office Machine Repairers 73,010 $46,860
Telemarketers 66,430 $34,410
Demonstrators and Product Promoters 64,770 $37,960
Sales Engineers 56,690 $121,520
Photographers 51,230 $42,520
Floral Designers 40,160 $36,120
Statisticians 29,800 $103,300
Advertising and Promotions Managers 21,100 $126,960
Door-to-Door Sales Workers, News and Street Vendors, and Related Workers 4,590 $34,530
Sociologists 2,950 $101,690
Mathematicians 2,220 $121,680

AI exposure across this cluster

Two published studies estimate how exposed each occupation is to today's AI. The OpenAI "GPTs are GPTs" study rates the share of an occupation's tasks a large language model (with tools) could speed up by half or more; averaged across this cluster it is 50% — 82nd percentile of the 14 clusters. The independent Felten/Raj/Seamans AI Occupational Exposure index averages 0.75 here.

Computed across the 25 of 27 occupations in this cluster that carry a published exposure score.

Exposure measures where AI could assist tasks — it is not a prediction that these jobs will be automated. High exposure most often means augmentation (faster work), and many high-exposure occupations are also projected to grow.

Where the work sits

The framework anchors each cluster to one or more NAICS industry sectors — the parts of the economy where this work concentrates.

Education programs that lead here

A sample of the 54 CIP 2020 instructional programs the framework crosswalks to this cluster — the fields of study that prepare people for this work.

  • Advertising
  • Agricultural/Farm Supplies Retailing and Wholesaling
  • Apparel and Accessories Marketing Operations
  • Apparel and Textile Marketing Management
  • Applied Demography
  • Applied Economics
  • Applied Mathematics, Other
  • Applied Statistics, General
  • Auctioneering
  • Business Administration and Management, General
  • Business Analytics
  • Business and Personal/Financial Services Marketing Operations
  • Business/Commerce, General
  • Commercial Photography
  • Computer Installation and Repair Technology/Technician
  • Consumer Merchandising/Retailing Management
  • Customer Service Support/Call Center/Teleservice Operation
  • Data Analytics, General
  • Data Analytics, Other
  • Data Science, General
  • Data Science, Other
  • Demography and Population Studies
  • Digital Marketing
  • E-Commerce/Electronic Commerce

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

Data compiled June 3, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

Cite this page
Plain

Singulariki. "Marketing & Sales." Singulariki: a source-backed encyclopedia of work. Built from O*NET 30.3; BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2024; Census NAICS 2022; CIP-2020 2020; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130; AI Occupational Exposure (AIOE) Felten, Raj & Seamans. Accessed June 7, 2026. https://singulariki.com/clusters/marketing-sales

APA

Singulariki. (2026). Marketing & Sales. Singulariki: a source-backed encyclopedia of work. Retrieved June 7, 2026, from https://singulariki.com/clusters/marketing-sales

BibTeX
@misc{singulariki-marketing-sales,
  title  = {Marketing & Sales},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2024; Census NAICS 2022; CIP-2020 2020; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130; AI Occupational Exposure (AIOE) Felten, Raj & Seamans. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/clusters/marketing-sales}
}

Citations name the underlying public dataset releases — they reflect what this page is built from, not just the URL.