The Datum Report

Occupation 7132 · Sales and customer service occupations

Sales supervisors - retail and wholesale

Half of full-time sales supervisors - retail and wholesale in the UK earn more than £29,172 a year, and half earn less.

Sales supervisors oversee operations and directly supervise and coordinate the activities of sales and related workers in retail and wholesale establishments.

How people enter it

No minimum academic qualifications are required although some employers may require GCSEs/S grades or A levels/H grades along with relevant work experience. Vocational qualifications in Retail Operations are available at levels 1 and 2, and apprenticeships may be available in some areas. Professional qualifications are relevant in some areas of selling and may be an advantage.

What the work involves

• directly supervises and coordinates the activities of sales and related workers
• establishes and monitors work schedules to meet sales and productivity targets
• liaises with managers and other departments to resolve operational problems
• determines or recommends staffing and other needs to meet sales and productivity targets
• reports as required to managerial staff on departmental activities

Also called

Bakery manager (retail trade) · Check-out supervisor · Section manager (retail trade) · Shop supervisor (retail trade) · Supervisor (retail, wholesale trade) · Team leader (retail trade)

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for sales supervisors - retail and wholesale, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 11 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Shopkeepers and owners - retail and wholesale