What a telemarketer costs in the US
The wage BLS measured across 58,430 jobs, what an employer pays on top of it, the pay in every state, and which of the job's core tasks already show up in AI use.
Medians for the whole US. Your own cost depends on where you hire, the benefits you offer and the hours worked.
- Median wage
- $35,450
- Hourly wage
- $17.04
- Loaded per hour
- $21.22
- Middle half earns
- $29,640 to $40,230
- Jobs in the US
- 58,430
Wage × 1.2455 for benefits and payroll taxes, from BLS.
A telemarketer in the US is paid a median $35,450 a year, $17.04 an hour, across 58,430 jobs. With benefits, a small employer pays about $44,150. Of its 8 core tasks, 3 showed up in Claude.ai conversations in May 2026, and in 2 of those Claude mostly did the task rather than assisting.
The work, task by task
The 8 core tasks O*NET lists for telemarketers, most important first, and how each showed up in Claude.ai conversations in May 2026. The bar splits those conversations between Claude doing the task and Claude helping a person do it.
- 01Contact businesses or private individuals by telephone to solicit sales for goods or services, or to request donations for charitable causes.API: 100% did the task, 0% helped
- 02Explain products or services and prices, and answer questions from customers.Claude.ai: 25% did the task, 75% helped · API: 78% did the task
- 03Obtain customer information such as name, address, and payment method, and enter orders into computers.
- 04Record names, addresses, purchases, and reactions of prospects contacted.
- 05Maintain records of contacts, accounts, and orders.Claude.ai: 77% did the task, 23% helped · API: 97% did the task
- 06Answer telephone calls from potential customers who have been solicited through advertisements.
- 07Deliver prepared sales talks, reading from scripts that describe products or services, to persuade potential customers to purchase a product or service or to make a donation.API: 98% did the task, 2% helped
- 08Telephone or write letters to respond to correspondence from customers or to follow up initial sales contacts.Claude.ai: 62% did the task, 38% helped · API: 99% did the task
3 of 8 tasks appear in the Claude.ai sample of the Anthropic Economic Index for May 2026, and 2 more only in its sample of API traffic, where businesses run Claude inside their own software. A task without a row had too few conversations for Anthropic to publish, which is not the same as none. Shares are of all sampled Claude.ai conversations, so small figures are normal: 0.47% of every conversation that month was about this occupation.
Pay by state
The median annual wage in each state and DC, and the same wage fully loaded. Kansas pays the most, $48,010; Mississippi the least, $21,540. BLS publishes no figure where its sample is too small, which leaves 10 gaps here.
| State | Median wage | Fully loaded | Middle half | Jobs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | $34,840 | $43,390 | $29,990 to $35,040 | 1,330 |
| Alaska | Not published | · | · | · |
| Arizona | $37,750 | $47,020 | $32,160 to $43,940 | 1,550 |
| Arkansas | $29,060 | $36,190 | $28,780 to $29,210 | 840 |
| California | $46,000 | $57,290 | $37,290 to $56,910 | 3,880 |
| Colorado | $47,670 | $59,370 | $39,730 to $62,920 | 880 |
| Connecticut | $45,200 | $56,300 | $41,490 to $58,900 | 110 |
| Delaware | Not published | · | · | · |
| District of Columbia | Not published | · | · | · |
| Florida | $35,570 | $44,300 | $27,660 to $36,400 | 9,760 |
| Georgia | $36,020 | $44,860 | $33,060 to $40,190 | 2,620 |
| Hawaii | Not published | · | · | · |
| Idaho | $39,400 | $49,070 | $28,310 to $41,440 | 280 |
| Illinois | $31,200 | $38,860 | $31,200 to $49,740 | 870 |
| Indiana | $31,550 | $39,300 | $24,990 to $36,340 | 690 |
| Iowa | $33,640 | $41,900 | $29,070 to $37,850 | 1,100 |
| Kansas | $48,010 | $59,800 | $24,620 to $50,330 | · |
| Kentucky | $34,450 | $42,910 | $29,730 to $38,620 | 910 |
| Louisiana | $28,910 | $36,010 | $26,820 to $30,890 | 380 |
| Maine | $32,610 | $40,620 | $30,470 to $47,960 | · |
| Maryland | $35,590 | $44,330 | $32,930 to $46,650 | 540 |
| Massachusetts | $44,650 | $55,610 | $44,650 to $46,240 | · |
| Michigan | $33,040 | $41,150 | $30,580 to $34,610 | 1,120 |
| Minnesota | $39,850 | $49,630 | $35,990 to $60,250 | 650 |
| Mississippi | $21,540 | $26,830 | $21,490 to $28,430 | 370 |
| Missouri | $29,840 | $37,170 | $29,120 to $33,640 | 2,710 |
| Montana | Not published | · | · | · |
| Nebraska | $31,200 | $38,860 | $28,990 to $51,510 | 490 |
| Nevada | $34,290 | $42,710 | $25,860 to $36,190 | 2,200 |
| New Hampshire | $30,530 | $38,030 | $27,990 to $37,750 | 530 |
| New Jersey | $39,370 | $49,040 | $33,460 to $41,850 | 410 |
| New Mexico | Not published | · | · | · |
| New York | $41,400 | $51,560 | $36,310 to $47,840 | 1,960 |
| North Carolina | $34,380 | $42,820 | $29,870 to $41,790 | 1,820 |
| North Dakota | $23,440 | $29,190 | $21,440 to $25,940 | 120 |
| Ohio | $35,290 | $43,950 | $29,030 to $37,540 | 3,090 |
| Oklahoma | $26,880 | $33,480 | $26,210 to $32,160 | 470 |
| Oregon | $42,060 | $52,390 | $37,390 to $46,860 | 420 |
| Pennsylvania | $28,430 | $35,410 | $25,230 to $32,240 | 1,710 |
| Rhode Island | Not published | · | · | · |
| South Carolina | $37,090 | $46,200 | $28,360 to $39,750 | 1,060 |
| South Dakota | Not published | · | · | · |
| Tennessee | $29,470 | $36,700 | $22,490 to $37,730 | 2,210 |
| Texas | $34,290 | $42,710 | $28,460 to $39,310 | 3,660 |
| Utah | $36,610 | $45,600 | $33,770 to $38,250 | 390 |
| Vermont | Not published | · | · | · |
| Virginia | $37,440 | $46,630 | $35,360 to $44,180 | · |
| Washington | $39,670 | $49,410 | $35,630 to $40,060 | 300 |
| West Virginia | $33,370 | $41,560 | $29,820 to $34,040 | 440 |
| Wisconsin | $33,260 | $41,430 | $29,280 to $37,310 | 1,160 |
| Wyoming | Not published | · | · | · |
The same benefits ratio applies in every state, because BLS does not publish benefit costs by business size for each state. The middle half is the 25th to 75th percentile wage.
Where the numbers come from
Every figure is copied from a public file. The only arithmetic is the loaded cost: the wage times 1.2455.
- Wages
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, occupation 41-9041 (Telemarketers). Annual figures are the hourly wage times 2,080 hours, as BLS computes them, so they already include pay for paid leave.
- Fully loaded
- BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026 (2026 Q2), private businesses with 1 to 49 workers: $37.64 an hour in total compensation over $27.88 in wages plus $2.34 in paid leave gives 1.2455. Paid leave sits in the denominator because the annual wage already pays it.
- Tasks
- O*NET 31.0 core tasks for 41-9041.00, the ten most important by their importance rating. A few occupations list fewer core tasks.
- AI use
- Anthropic Economic Index, release of June 2026, conversations from May 2026. "Did the task" is Anthropic's automation share, where the user directs Claude to do the work; "helped" is augmentation, where the user works with Claude to learn, check or iterate.
- Not measured
- What a particular business pays, and whether an AI system can do a task well. The AI figures count conversations about a task, not jobs replaced.
This page 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. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. AI use data from the Anthropic Economic Index by Anthropic, under CC BY. Wage and benefit data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
What would an AI system cost for this work?
Put $44,150 beside the running cost of a system doing the tasks above, with the build counted in year one.
BLS wages May 2025 · O*NET 31.0 · Anthropic Economic Index