Sales Statistics (2026): 64 Sourced Figures

This page collects 64 figures on sales work, sales volumes and how business buyers now buy. Every number links to the document that first published it. Most figures come from official statistics: the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the US Census Bureau, the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Eurostat. Buyer research comes from Gartner. Seller survey results come from Salesforce and are labeled as vendor-reported. Company figures come from investor releases and SEC filings. For a comparison of the systems sales teams use to track pipeline and deals, see the StatWharf comparison of CRM software.

Key figures at a glance

Sales jobs and pay in the United States

The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) groups sales jobs into one occupational family. Wage figures come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey for May 2025. Job counts are for 2025. Projections cover the decade from 2025 to 2035.

The OOH states that overall employment in sales occupations is projected to decline over the 2025 to 2035 decade. Even so, the BLS projects about 1.7 million openings each year on average. Most of those openings replace workers who leave the occupations permanently. The median annual wage for the sales group was $38,530 in May 2025. The median for all occupations was $50,980.

Pay varies widely within business-to-business sales. The OOH splits wholesale and manufacturing representatives into two groups.

• Representatives selling technical and scientific products earned a median of $104,920 in May 2025.
• Representatives selling all other products earned a median of $72,080.
• About 47,300 openings for sales managers are projected each year over the decade.
• About 550,600 openings for retail sales workers are projected each year.
• Sales manager employment is projected to grow by 29,000 jobs from 2025 to 2035.

The gap between the group median and the top roles is large. Retail sales workers are the biggest group and pull the median down. Business-to-business roles that sell complex products pay two to four times the sales group median.

Retail and online sales in the United States

The US Census Bureau publishes monthly and quarterly estimates of retail sales. The figures below are as first published. On September 28, 2026, the Census Bureau released revised estimates based on its annual survey results. Both releases carry a note to that effect.

E-commerce grew faster than retail as a whole. The Census Bureau reported that online sales rose 12.2% from the second quarter of 2025. Total retail sales rose 6.7% over the same period. Online sales therefore keep taking share of total retail spending. The advance estimate for August 2026 showed monthly retail and food services sales up 1.2% from July.

Retail and online sales in Europe

The ONS publishes monthly retail sales for Great Britain from its Retail Sales Inquiry. Eurostat publishes yearly e-commerce figures for EU enterprises from its survey on ICT usage. The Eurostat figures cover sales by all enterprises in the survey scope, not only retailers.

The Eurostat article adds detail on who sells online and how.

• In 2024, 48.48% of large EU enterprises made e-sales.
• Orders through websites or apps made up 8.39% of total turnover.
• Orders through EDI-type messages made up 11.07% of total turnover. EDI is the automated exchange of orders between business systems.
• Ireland had the highest share of turnover from e-sales, at 38.25%.

EDI-type sales carry more turnover than web sales in the EU. Most of that value flows between businesses, not to consumers. In Great Britain, the online share of retail sales rose from 28.4% in July 2026 to 28.8% in August 2026.

How B2B buyers buy

Gartner’s 2026 releases on business buyers draw on a survey of 645 or 646 B2B buyers conducted in 2025. The two releases state slightly different sample sizes. A separate survey covered 227 chief sales officers.

The rep-free preference rose from one survey year to the next. Gartner’s June 2025 release reported that 61% of B2B buyers preferred a rep-free buying experience. That survey of 632 buyers ran in August and September 2024. The same release found that 73% of B2B buyers actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach.

The figures look contradictory at first. Most buyers say they prefer no rep, yet most also want a rep to check what AI told them. Gartner reads this as a change in the role of the seller rather than a smaller role. Buyers in the survey were 39 percentage points more likely to say a rep understood their needs than GenAI. They were 28 percentage points more likely to say a rep helped them advance to the next step. Buying groups with low dysfunction were 13 times more likely to report high-quality deals.

AI in sales teams

Two sources cover AI use inside sales organizations. Gartner surveyed 227 chief sales officers in August and September 2025. Salesforce, a CRM vendor, ran its State of Sales survey of 4,050 sales professionals in the same months. The Salesforce figures are vendor-reported. Salesforce sells AI agents for sales teams.

Gartner reported the following from its survey of chief sales officers.

• Sales organizations that give sellers AI-enabled next best actions are 2.6 times more likely to achieve commercial growth.
• Organizations that prioritize upskilling sellers on AI are 2.4 times more likely to achieve strong revenue growth.
• Gartner predicts that by 2027, 95% of sellers’ research workflows will begin with AI. This is a forecast, not a measurement.

The time figure matters most for sales managers. If 40% of seller time goes to selling, 60% goes to other work such as data entry, research and internal tasks. A vendor that sells automation has an interest in showing this gap. The figure describes survey respondents, not every sales team.

Sales software vendor results

Public CRM vendors report revenue and customer counts each quarter. These figures show how much companies spend on the systems that run sales teams. Each company sells more than sales software, so the totals cover wider product lines.

Notes on the vendor figures:

• Salesforce’s quarterly revenue includes a $456 million contribution from Informatica, which it acquired. The release states this next to the headline figure.
• Agentforce ARR, as defined by Salesforce from this quarter, includes Slackbot and Headless 360.
• The Microsoft release states a growth rate for Dynamics 365 revenue. It gives no dollar figure for that product line.

Method

• Data window. Figures date from 2024 to 2026. The page uses the most recent release of each series found at the check date. Eurostat figures cover 2024, the latest year in the February 2026 extraction. Gartner’s 2025 release is used only to show the change in the rep-free preference.
• Primary sources only. Each figure links to the body that first published it. These are government statistical agencies (BLS, US Census Bureau, ONS, Eurostat) and the survey publisher (Gartner). Company releases, SEC filings and the newsroom of the vendor that ran its own survey were also used. Statistics aggregators, roundups and articles that re-quote figures were not used. Vendor survey results are labeled as vendor-reported with the vendor named.
• Checks. StatWharf Editorial opened each source in October 2026 and checked that the figure appears there with the stated date. Figures not found on a primary source were left out. This includes the BLS national wage table for all sales and related occupations, which was not reachable at the check date. Older Salesforce selling-time figures that appear on third-party pages were also left out.
• Revisions. The US Census Bureau revised its monthly retail estimates on September 28, 2026. The Census figures on this page are as first published on August 18 and September 16, 2026. The Census Bureau links point to its current-release files, which change with each new release.
• No modeling. The page reports published figures only. No value is calculated or estimated by StatWharf.

Using these figures

The figures point to three facts about selling in 2026. First, sales remains a large employer with wide pay differences. The BLS projects 1.7 million openings a year, and sales managers earn almost four times the group median. Second, buyers do more of the work on their own. Two in three B2B buyers prefer no rep, and online sales take a growing share of retail in the United States and Great Britain. Third, sellers still matter at the point of decision. Most buyers want a rep to check what AI told them.

For sales teams, the practical question is how sellers spend the time they have. A CRM records accounts, contacts, deals and activity in one place, and many now add AI features for research and follow-up. Products, pricing disclosure and fit are compared in the StatWharf comparison of CRM software. Other StatWharf data pages are listed in the research directory. Send corrections to any figure to the editorial address below.

Factual corrections are free: editorial@statwharf.com.