The median is the middle value when you line everyone up: half above, half below. The average is the total divided by the head count, and one giant drags it up. Ten players on a court, one of them seven feet tall: the average says the team is tall, the median tells you what the player in the middle looks like.
No. 01The pickup game you already understand
In shortOne seven-footer makes the average lie. The median ignores him and points at the player in the middle.
Ten players show up for a Saturday pickup game. Nine of them are 5 feet 9 inches. The tenth is 7 feet even, and he brought his own ball.
Add the heights up and divide by ten and you get the average: 5 feet 10 and a half inches. Nobody on the court is that height. Nine players are shorter, one is a lot taller, and the number describes a team that does not exist.
Now line them up shortest to tallest and point at the middle. The fifth and sixth players are both 5 feet 9, so the median is 5 feet 9. That is what the team actually looks like. That is who is guarding you.
The seven-footer moved the average by an inch and a half and moved the median not at all. Swap him for someone 7 feet 6 and the average climbs again; the median still says 5 feet 9. The median does not care how tall the tallest player is. It only cares who is in the middle.
01An average describes a team that may not exist. A median points at a player who does.
No. 02Now the insurance version
In shortThe federal midpoint for insurance sales agents was $62,280 in May 2025, with the bottom tenth under $37,330 and the top tenth over $138,140.
Pay in commission sales is shaped like that court, only more so. Most agents earn in a band, and a few earn multiples of it. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 572,600 insurance sales agents in 2025 and reports the midpoint, not the average: the median agent earned $62,280 a year in May 2025. The lowest tenth earned under $37,330. The highest tenth earned over $138,140.1
Read that as the lineup. The agent in the middle, the one half the field is above and half below, earned $62,280. The top tenth are the seven-footers, more than a hundred thousand dollars a year above the bottom tenth. If you added everyone’s pay and divided by 572,600, the seven-footers would pull the result above the midpoint, which is why anyone who wants to describe the typical agent reports the median.
Agencies tend to do the opposite. The earnings slide usually shows an average, and usually shows it for selected levels: the average for people who reached a named leadership rank, sometimes the average for the top producers. Those are real numbers about real people. They are also the seven-footers, averaged among themselves. The number that is missing is the median for everyone who held a license that year, including the person who wrote two policies and left in March.
The long version, with the month-by-month cash arithmetic, is here.
| In the story | In real life |
|---|---|
| Ten players on the court | Every licensed agent at the agency, including the ones who left |
| The seven-footer | The few agents earning several times the midpoint |
| The average height | The earnings figure on the recruiting slide |
| The median height | The pay of the agent half the field is above and half below |
| Pointing at the middle player | Asking for the median across everyone, before expenses |
No. 03Where people get burned
In shortReading the leadership average as your likely year, and forgetting that expenses come out before any of it is yours.
The first burn is reading a selected average as a forecast. The slide says a certain rank averages a big number, and the listener hears “that is me in year two.” It is not a forecast. It is the height of the tallest players, measured after they got tall. The question the slide answers is “how tall are the tall ones,” which is not the question you walked in with.
The second burn is expenses. The federal figure is wages. An agency’s average is often gross commission, before licensing, the errors-and-omissions policy, leads, mileage, and the self-employment tax that nothing was withheld for. A gross average at a high rank can be true and still describe a life that is not yours.
The one place the story breaks is the shape of the spread. Heights bunch together; nobody on a court is three times anyone else’s height. Pay does not bunch. The top tenth of insurance agents earned more than three and a half times what the bottom tenth earned, so the average gets pulled far harder than an inch and a half. In pay, the median matters even more than it does on the court.
The federal regulator that polices earnings claims has said the same thing in plainer terms. Its business guidance on multi-level marketing, written for that industry, says earnings claims should reflect what a typical participant is likely to earn after expenses, and that showing atypical earnings to someone weighing an income opportunity is “likely to generate a deceptive impression.” A “results not typical” line in small print does not fix it.2 Agencies recruiting licensed agents are a different kind of business, but the arithmetic is the same: show the middle player or you have not shown the team.
No. 04The one question to ask
In short“What did the median agent here earn last year, across everyone who held a license, before expenses?”
Ask it exactly like that. A straight answer is a single dollar figure, with the head count it came from and the year, and the person giving it does not flinch. It will be lower than anything on the slide. That is not a bad sign. It is the sign that you were just told the truth about the team, and now you can decide whether you want to play on it.
A crooked answer changes the subject to the seven-footer. “Our top people make...” is a sentence about someone else.
The Kenswick Partners is a journal, and partner agencies may compensate us when a reader asks to be introduced to them. We ask the agencies we work with the same question.
QuestionsQuestions people ask
- What is the difference between median and average pay?
- The average adds up everyone’s pay and divides by the number of people, so a few very high earners pull it up. The median is the pay of the person in the exact middle when everyone is lined up from lowest to highest, with half above and half below. When a few people earn far more than the rest, the median is the better description of a typical person.
- What is the median pay for an insurance agent?
- The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the median annual wage for insurance sales agents at $62,280 in May 2025, across all lines of insurance and all years of experience. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $37,330 and the highest 10 percent earned more than $138,140. A first-year agent paid by commission will usually land below the median.
- Why do companies report average income instead of median?
- Because the average is higher whenever a few people earn far more than the rest, and an average for a selected group, such as a leadership rank, is higher still. The FTC’s guidance on earnings claims says figures should reflect what a typical participant earns after expenses, and that showing atypical earnings without the typical ones is likely to be deceptive.
NotesSources
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Insurance Sales Agents, May 2025 wages ($62,280 median; $37,330; $138,140; 572,600 agents), page modified 27 August 2026, checked 27 October 2026
- Federal Trade Commission, Business Guidance Concerning Multi-Level Marketing, question 13 on income and earnings representations, April 2024, checked 27 October 2026