Warehouse Associate job description
108 verified openings in Warehouse Associate
Warehouse associate is a title employers write rather than an occupation BLS counts. Postings under it cover unloading trailers, putaway, picking, packing, cycle counting, staging freight, and running a pallet jack or a lift once certified for it. The nearest single line is laborers and freight, stock, and material movers, hand, which the material handler page here also uses: 2,940,300 jobs in 2025 and a May 2025 median of $40,240. Across the wider hand laborers and material movers group, 6,917,800 jobs in all, BLS reported a median of $38,220 a year, or $18.38 an hour, the bottom tenth under $30,190 and the top tenth over $52,340. Retail trade employs 35 percent of that group and transportation and warehousing 22 percent.
Core Duties and Responsibilities
Three tasks come before the rest: keeping equipment storage areas in order so stock is protected, reading work orders or taking instructions on what needs doing, and moving freight between storage, production, docks, and vehicles. Around those sit sorting cargo, strapping and padding so nothing shifts in transit, attaching identifying tags, and writing units handled onto a daily sheet. The whole point of the title is that one person does several of them in a shift.
Common Skills and Technologies
An associate works to other people's schedules, so Coordination and Active Listening come first, with Time Management and Monitoring next. The named software is ordinary, SAP and the usual Microsoft desktop, over a record that runs to inventory management, supply chain, and industrial control software. Everything else is equipment, and which equipment an associate is signed off on decides which department they land in.
Education, Training, and Career Path
Nearly nine in ten of the people surveyed hold a high school diploma or GED, and entry takes no formal credential at all, and training runs a month or less. After that the paths split by equipment and by desk: certification on a lift, a receiving or inventory seat where the median is $45,260, or a lead role.
Sources: O*NET 30.0, 53-7062.00 Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand, https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/53-7062.00. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, 53-7062, https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm. BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Hand Laborers and Material Movers, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/hand-laborers-and-material-movers.htm.