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Sales & business development · Organizing & Managing

Buyer: what the job actually is

Choosing what a store or wholesaler will sell, from whom, at what price, and being wrong with someone else's money.

Published Last reviewed How we research and correct this

Buyer: quick facts

Buyer salary in Ontario: the median pay is $29.81 an hour, according to Job Bank (reference period 2023-2024). Its three-year outlook in Ontario is moderate. The job usually needs a college diploma, or an apprenticeship of two or more years.

Median pay in Ontario
$29.81 an hour
Pay range (low to high)
$20.00 to $45.67 an hour
Job outlook, 2025-2027
Moderate
People working in it in Ontario
10,250
Usually needs
Usually a college diploma, or an apprenticeship of two or more years

Source: Job Bank wages (updated 19 November 2025) and job prospects (updated 10 December 2025), NOC 62101. Pay varies by region and experience.

The work

What this job actually is

  • Job Bank says retail and wholesale buyers buy merchandise for resale by retail or wholesale establishments.
  • You decide what goes on the shelves: which products, how many, from which supplier, at what cost. You negotiate with suppliers and you answer for whether it sells.
  • This is the retail and wholesale kind of buying. The buyer who purchases materials and services for a business to use is a different job, and has its own page under procurement agent.
  • Job Bank lists monitoring, material resource management, negotiation, financial resource management and persuasion among the core competencies.
  • Buying is a numbers job as much as a taste job. You look at what sold and what did not before you decide what to order next.

A Tuesday

What a normal day looks like

Not a good day or a bad one. The ordinary version, which is what you would actually be living.

  1. 8:30 — Read the sales report from yesterday. Something sold out, something did not move, and you need to know why.
  2. 9:00 — Review stock levels against the plan and decide what to reorder, what to mark down and what to stop buying.
  3. 10:00 — A call with a supplier. You are talking about price, quantities, delivery dates and who pays if the shipment is late.
  4. 11:00 — A supplier visits with samples. You look, feel, compare, ask the cost and consider whether customers will pay for it.
  5. 12:30 — Lunch at your desk, reading a trade newsletter to find out what your competitors are stocking.
  6. 13:30 — Meet the store or sales team. They tell you what customers are asking for that you do not carry.
  7. 15:00 — Work out a purchase order against a budget. If you over-order, the cost is a discount you cannot afford. If you under-order, you lose sales.
  8. 16:30 — Chase a late shipment and negotiate what the supplier will do about it.

Honestly

Who loves this, and who should not do it

The second list is the useful one. Nearly every careers page leaves it out, which is why nearly every careers page reads like an advert.

You may like this if
  • You like noticing what people buy and wondering why.
  • You are comfortable negotiating, and you can hold your ground politely.
  • You like working with numbers and with products in the same job.
  • You can make a decision with imperfect information and live with being wrong sometimes.
  • You are patient, and willing to start in retail or wholesale on the floor to work up.
You may hate this if
  • You dislike risk with other people's money. A bad order is a visible loss.
  • You do not like negotiation or phone calls with suppliers.
  • You want a job with certain growth. Job Bank says employment decline will lead to the loss of some positions in this group.
  • You want to start straight out of school. Job Bank says previous experience in retail or wholesale establishments is usually required.
  • You prefer to be creative with product and not to be judged by sales numbers. In this job, the numbers are the verdict.

The route in

How you actually get there in Ontario

  1. Finish high school, then a diploma or degree

    Job Bank says completion of secondary school is required and a university degree or college diploma in business, marketing or a related programme is usually required.

  2. Get retail or wholesale experience

    Job Bank says previous work experience in retail or wholesale establishments is usually required, and that supervisors and senior buyers require experience in the occupation supervised or in a particular merchandise line. A job on the sales floor or in stock is the standard first step.

  3. There is no licence

    Job Bank says the occupation is not regulated in Canada, so no mandatory certification is required in Ontario. This page does not describe optional designations because we did not read them.

  4. Move up through assistant buyer

    Many buyers start as an assistant, coordinator or analyst, learning the supplier, the product and the systems. Specialising in one product line makes you more useful to an employer.

Where this comes from: Job Bank: Retail and wholesale buyers, requirements in Ontario · Job Bank: Retail and wholesale buyers, occupational summary

The money

Buyer salary in Ontario

Job Bank's own figures, quoted rather than summarised, with the period they describe — so you can tell how old they are and go and check them.

$20.00
Low (hourly)
$29.81
Median (hourly)
$45.67
High (hourly)

Ontario, NOC 62101. Reference period 2023-2024, last updated by Job Bank on 19 November 2025. Wages vary a lot by region inside Ontario and by how long you have been doing it — the low figure is roughly where you start, not what the job is worth.

Source: Job Bank — Buyer wages in Ontario

Where it is heading

The outlook for the next three years

Job Bank publishes a three-year outlook for every job in every province. It is the closest thing to an honest forecast, and it moves, so read it as a weather report rather than a verdict.

Ontario, 2025-2027

Moderate3 out of 5 stars

  • Employment decline will lead to the loss of some positions.
  • Several positions will become available due to retirements.
  • There are a moderate number of unemployed workers with recent experience in this occupation.

What that rating means: how many openings Job Bank expects in Ontario for this kind of work against how many people are likely to be looking — not whether it is a good job. A “limited” rating means more competition for each opening; it does not close the door, and it can change before you are ready to walk through it.

10,250
people work in this job in Ontario
59%
are women (48% across all jobs)
6%
are self-employed (15% across all jobs)

Source: Job Bank — Retail and wholesale buyers job prospects in Ontario (NOC 62101). Outlook updated by Job Bank on 10 December 2025; read by us on 5 October 2026.

Before you leave school

Things you can do now

  • Take business, accounting and marketing courses. Margin, markup and inventory are the maths of the job.
  • Get a part-time job in a store or stockroom and pay attention to what sells and what gets marked down.
  • Run a small sale of your own, such as a school sale, a table at a market or an online shop, where you choose what to stock and have to price it.
  • Look at college and university business programmes on ontariocolleges.ca and ontariouniversitiesinfo.ca and see how many have co-op.

Test it

Do this before you decide anything

Reading about a job tells you almost nothing. This is designed to be done alone, this week, for free.

Be a buyer for a pretend shelf with a real budget

About 90 minutes
  1. Pick a shop you know well, and choose one shelf or product category. Give yourself a pretend budget and write it down.
  2. Look at what is there: what is priced high, what is on sale, what looks old, what is sold out. Take notes, not photos of people.
  3. Choose what you would order for next month: products, quantities and prices you would aim to pay. Explain each choice in one sentence.
  4. Come back in two weeks and see what changed on that shelf. Mark which of your choices you would have got right, and note what you did not see coming.

What it tells you. If you found it interesting to guess what people would buy, and liked checking afterwards, you have the curiosity this job runs on, and a retail job is a good place to start. If it felt like a guessing game with no point, or you disliked deciding without being sure, buying may not suit you. Being wrong with a budget is the daily reality of it.

Better than any article

Questions for somebody who does this job

Most people say yes to a teenager who asks good questions. These are the ones that get real answers rather than encouragement.

  1. “How do you decide what to order and how much?”
  2. “What do you do when something you chose does not sell?”
  3. “How did you get from your first job to being a buyer?”
  4. “How much of your week is numbers, and how much is suppliers and products?”
  5. “How is buying changing with online shopping?”
  6. “What would you tell someone who wants to be a buyer but has no experience?”

Could you own one of these?

The part other career sites never mention

Yes, in a way: every shop owner is also the buyer, and choosing stock well is the main skill of running a small retail or resale business. A teen can test it on a small scale with a market table or an online shop. The risk is the same as the job, which is that you spend your own money on stock that does not sell, so start small. See the business owner page for the rest of the picture.

Business 101 is free and teaches that part

Quick answers

Questions people ask about this job

How much does a buyer make in Ontario?

The median pay for a buyer in Ontario is $29.81 an hour, according to Job Bank (reference period 2023-2024, updated 19 November 2025). The range Job Bank publishes runs from $20.00 to $45.67 an hour. Pay varies by region, employer and experience.

What is the job outlook for a buyer in Ontario?

Job Bank rates the employment outlook for this work in Ontario as moderate for 2025-2027 (updated 10 December 2025). Employment decline will lead to the loss of some positions. Several positions will become available due to retirements. There are a moderate number of unemployed workers with recent experience in this occupation. A lower rating means more competition for each opening, not that no one is hiring.

What do you need to become a buyer in Ontario?

Job Bank says this work usually needs a college diploma, or an apprenticeship of two or more years. The usual route in Ontario, in order: Finish high school, then a diploma or degree; Get retail or wholesale experience; There is no licence.

How many people work as a buyer in Ontario, and how many are women?

Job Bank counts about 10,250 people working in this job in Ontario. 59% of them are women, compared with 48% across all jobs. That describes who does the work today, not who can.

Not sure this is the right list to be reading

Start from yourself, not from the job.

Future Finder is free, takes about ten minutes, needs no account and stores nothing. It will tell you which kinds of work you lean toward, and which of these pages are worth your time.

Try Future Finder — freeAll jobs

Parent of a teenager weighing this up? Career coaching for teens gets them talking to people who do the work, anywhere in Ontario.

If this appeals, look at these too

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Read next

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Wages and training requirements change. Every figure on this page is linked to the body that publishes it, and the review date above says when we last checked. If you find something out of date, tell us and we will fix it.