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Key statistics

The identity block — every fact is canon, none is generated.

1 of 8

Track

Support

Family rungs priced

S1 · S2 · S3 · S4 · S5

41-0000

retail_hospitality

Coordinates

3 / 4 spaces

pay@2 · 2026-07

What this role is

Entry-level associate who sells and maintains a specific product category in a retail store. At the Support Associate (S1) level, the role owns a single task type or queue, routine, well-defined requests, and drives individual transactions. None.

What this level does

Operate store equipment — price guns, taggers, tape dispensers — to tag and price merchandise following the specific instructions given for each product batch
Answer routine, front-line product inquiries using the existing product FAQ and specification sheets, escalating anything not covered
File and organize product documentation (user manuals, spec sheets) into the standard locations as directed
Complete assigned product launch prep tasks — such as staging collateral or stocking new items — under close supervision

Knowledge applied: General knowledge of store product-handling routines — operating price guns, taggers and tape dispensers, and using standard FAQ/spec references to answer inquiries.
Complexity & problem solving: Routine, prescribed tasks where the answer is readily available in existing documentation or from a supervisor.
Collaboration & interaction: Standard interactions completing own tasks; escalates product questions beyond the provided references.
Typical experience: 0–1 yrs; minimal experience.

Skills at this level

Store Product Equipment Operation: — Operates store product-handling equipment — price guns, taggers and tape dispensers — to tag, price and prepare merchandise accurately and efficiently.
Merchandise Assessment: — Recognizes merchandise styles, quality and condition and applies the correct pricing, judging exceptions and damaged-stock cases against store procedure.
Product Documentation: — Creates and maintains product documentation — user manuals, product specifications, FAQ documents and sales collateral — keeping versions current for store and sales use.
Product Inquiry Handling: — Fields product inquiries and post-sales support requests, using existing references for routine cases and applying judgment on non-routine ones, escalating or resolving as appropriate.
Product Launch Coordination: — Coordinates the store-side tasks of a product launch or promotion — staging collateral, sequencing tasks and aligning timing across development, marketing, sales and customer service.
Cross-Department Coordination: — Acts as the operational bridge between development, marketing, sales and customer service so product goals and tasks stay aligned across teams.
Product Training Delivery: — Develops and delivers product training to sales and customer-service teams so they can accurately represent product features and handling.
Product Performance Analysis: — Performs basic analysis of product performance metrics and market research to inform how items are positioned and merchandised in the store.
Customer Feedback Relay: — Gathers and consolidates customer feedback on products and relays it to product development to inform improvements.
Product Procedure Development: — Adapts and creates product-operations procedures and documentation standards for a specialty area, rolling them out and guiding peers on their use.

Model-authored from 22 retrieved sources, then adversarially reviewed by an independent judge panel and held to a minimum-evidence floor before publication. Distinct from corpus-extracted content, which is labelled as such.

Pay across the ladder

Product Specialty — median with , by . Real canon data.

National-base pricing — this family's function differential is pending review, so dollar levels are not function-adjusted (level-over-level % is unaffected).

Pay figures are modeled estimates from our market equation — level-differentiated, with honest-wide bands. They refresh as new leveling evidence lands; treat per-role dollars as directional.

Demand — is the field growing, or just turning over?

SOC 41-0000 · national

Employment growth 2019–2024, BLS OEWSobserved

-5.0%First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers · United States

1,171,900 → 1,113,160 jobs

125,100 openings / year, split into:

replacement / exits 132,263

Growth — new jobs (-6%)Exits — backfill (100%)

This occupation is projected to contract — every opening is replacing someone leaving, not net new demand.

Projected growth 2024–34 contracting: -5.0%
Growth share of hiring: -6%
Exit / retention pressure high: 100%
Openings / year: 125,100

Two quantities, kept apart: observed = employment growth differenced from two BLS OEWS vintages (what already happened); projected = BLS Employment Projections 2024–34, openings decomposed into growth + exits (growth derived from projected employment change). Neither is a pay figure.

Where this role sits — growth vs. pay

level S1 held

Demand axis is projected growth (not raw openings — that just measures churn). A curated, de-duplicated set of recognizable occupations held at this level; this role is highlighted.

Where it pays — by metro

OEWS metro median

San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA$61k

San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA$54k

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV$50k

Boulder, CO$50k

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA$50k

Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH$48k

Lexington Park, MD$46k

Trenton-Princeton, NJ$46k

Pay only — metro-level demand isn't in public data (it needs job postings). National median $36k; the demand-cube initiative will add growth-by-metro.

What changes across the ladder

Level-distinction canon isn't available for the adjacent levels of this profile yet.

Level differentiators

What separates S1 (S1 — Support Associate) from the levels around it — this level only. Every word is real canon for this profile.

Scope: A single task type or queue
Autonomy: Close supervision; follows defined procedures
Complexity: Routine, well-defined requests
Impact: Individual transactions
Decision rights: Acts within scripts; escalates exceptions
Leadership: None

Full level-by-level matrix (side by side across the ladder) lives on the Ladder drill-down — not here.

Promotion

The next rung from S1 is S2.

Performance criteria for this profile render in the assessment kit →

People also watch

Nearest coordinate neighbors — same , same level. Each row's (confident / review / no match) comes from its — computed, not curated.

Profile	Key	Median	Δ structural
VP, Product Specialty Merchandising	jf_product_specialty::E1	$169,459†	confident0.06
Department Sales Supervisor	jf_product_specialty::M1	$85,619†	confident0.06
Product Sales Associate	jf_product_specialty::P1	$61,862†	confident0.06
Product Sales Associate	jf_product_specialty::S2	$42,923†	confident0.06

†National-base pricing — this family's function differential is pending review, so the dollar level is not function-adjusted.

Capability cluster

O*NET 41-1011

Core to this role. Click any element with an ⓘ for its O*NET definition. A job-specific capability model (SkillFrame) will sharpen this and add worked examples.

The Job Swatch

S1

jf_product_specialty::S1

Retail Sales Associate

Product Specialty

The swatch is JobFrame's core primitive: a hueset deterministically by the role's superfunction, the profileKey as its color code, the level ladder, and a content fingerprint. Two swatches that look alike are alike.

Because every role carries computable coordinates, similarity, leveling, and pricing become measurable instead of arguable— the whole point of "Pantone for jobs."

Structural

structural@1

Where it sits— position in the work taxonomy + level (weighted Gower, level > function > focus).

Track: S
Superfunction: retail_hospitality
Function: store_operations
Family: product_specialty
Universal level: 1 / 8

Content

content@2

What it's about— a fingerprint over the role's tasks & capabilities.

Two roles can sit far apart structurally yet be close in content — that gap is itself a signal.

3-state matching

How any two swatches compare — a real distance in coordinate space, resolved to a calibrated verdict (never a fake "94% match").

Cashier · S1review0.17

Loss Prevention · S1review0.17

Optical · S1review0.17

Pharmacy · S1review0.17

Store Management · S1review0.17

General · S1review0.17

Editions — frozen & versioned

structural@1live

Released 2026-06-17

content@2live

Released 2026-07-28

pay@2live

Released 2026-07-02

semantic@1live

Released 2026-07-02

Coordinates belong to a frozen, versioned edition — a coordinate computed today still means the same thing next quarter. Re-fitting issues a new edition, so comparisons are never silently redefined.

How to read this profile

Every number here is traceable — to a named source, a stated method, and an as-of date — and each value is labeled by how we know it: observed from data, computed by a model, projected forward, or governed canon. Nothing is a black box, and nothing is invented to fill a gap.

Where every number comes from

What	Source & method	Edition	State
Median pay + range	JobFrame pay equation (function base × family multiplier × level × focus differential)	pay@2	computed
Pay across the ladder	Same equation applied at each universal level	pay@2	computed
Demand — growth & openings	BLS Employment Projections; openings decomposed into growth + exits	EP 2024–34	projected
Pay by metro	BLS OEWS metropolitan medians	OEWS 2024	observed
Level distinctions	JobFrame universal-level canon (scope · autonomy · complexity · impact · decision rights · leadership)	canon	canon
Capability cluster	O*NET Knowledge / Skills / Abilities	O*NET 41-1011	computed
Coordinates	JobFrame coordinate system — structural (weighted Gower) + content fingerprint	structural@1 · content@2 · pay@2 · semantic@1	computed
Related roles	Nearest neighbors in the structural coordinate space	structural@1	computed

The principles behind the numbers

Ranges, not false precision

Pay is P10 · median · P90, never a single misleading number.

Three honest states, never a fake %

Role matches resolve to confident / review / no-match — a calibrated verdict, not a made-up percentage.

Provenance on every value

Each number carries whether it's observed, computed, projected, or canon — so you always know how much to lean on it.

Gaps shown as gaps

When a figure isn't available at the grain you need, we say so — we don't fabricate a number to fill the cell.

Frozen, versioned editions

Pay and coordinate editions are pinned, so a comparison you make today still means the same thing next quarter.

Privacy by min-N

Any aggregate over people is suppressed below a minimum count, so no individual is identifiable.

Freshness

As of2026-07-31Editioncanon-v2@2.1.0-completeSourcecanon-v2 cell + salary-benchmark (model)