Logistician Salary in Ohio: Pay by Experience, City & Take-Home

A logistician in Ohio earns a median of $83,460 a year, or about $40.13 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). Most of the field falls between $52,000 at the 10th percentile and $131,120 at the 90th. That median sits a touch above the national figure, and Ohio’s flat-ish income tax leaves more in your pocket than higher-tax states do.

How Ohio pay compares to the national median

The national median for logisticians is $82,320 a year, per the BLS (2025). Ohio’s median of $83,460 runs $1,140 higher. That’s a small premium, about 1.4 percent, so an offer near the national average is competitive here, and anything below the low $80,000s is worth a second look in this market.

The state mean tells a slightly different story. Average annual pay in Ohio is $89,600, which sits more than $6,000 above the median. When the mean pulls that far above the median, it usually means a cluster of high earners at the top is stretching the average. That matches the spread in this state: the 90th percentile reaches $131,120, more than double the 10th-percentile figure of $52,000. The takeaway is that experience, sector, and metro move pay a lot here, and the median alone hides how wide the range really gets.

Ohio employs about 8,990 logisticians, a sizable base for a Midwest state with heavy distribution and manufacturing activity. That depth of demand is part of why the local median holds above the national line.

One more comparison worth making is hourly. At $40.13 an hour, the Ohio median works out to a clean $40-plus rate, which is a useful benchmark if you’re weighing a contract or hourly logistics role against a salaried one. Multiply by a standard 2,080-hour year and you land back at the $83,460 figure, so an hourly offer below about $40 is paying under the state median for full-time work. At the 90th percentile, $131,120 a year is roughly $63 an hour, and at the 10th percentile $52,000 is about $25. Knowing those hourly anchors keeps you from undervaluing contract or per-project work, where pay is quoted by the hour and the annual equivalent is easy to lose track of.

Logistician salary in Ohio by experience

Pay climbs steadily with experience, certifications, and the size of the supply chain you run. The BLS percentile points are the cleanest proxy for that career arc. Entry-level roles, coordinator and analyst titles, sit near the 10th to 25th percentile. Mid-career managers land around the median. Senior planners, network designers, and logistics managers at large shippers reach the 75th and 90th.

The jump from early career to the median is the steepest part of the climb in percentage terms: moving from $64,400 to $83,460 is a 30 percent raise. After that, the gap from median to experienced ($83,460 to $105,340) is about $21,880, and from experienced to senior another $25,780. The biggest single lever between those tiers is scope. Owning a full network, a budget, and direct reports is what separates a $105,000 role from a $131,000 one in Ohio.

It helps to map those percentiles onto real job titles. The entry band, roughly $52,000 to $64,400, covers logistics coordinators, supply chain analysts in their first few years, and inventory or transportation clerks who have moved up. The median band, the low-to-mid $80,000s, is where you find seasoned supply chain analysts, demand planners, and first-line logistics supervisors. The $105,340 experienced tier maps to logistics managers and senior planners who own a distribution center, a region, or a major product line. The $131,120 senior figure is director-adjacent: people running multi-site networks, large transportation budgets, or strategic sourcing for a national shipper.

One thing worth noting for anyone early in the field. The distance between the 10th and 25th percentiles, $52,000 to $64,400, is $12,400, which you can often cover in two to four years simply by clearing your probation period, picking up a certification, and taking on planning work beyond pure execution. The returns to early experience are front-loaded in this occupation, so the first few promotions tend to move pay faster than later ones. After the median, raises come more from scope and specialization than from tenure alone.

Logistician salary by Ohio metro

Where you work inside Ohio matters more than usual for this role. The five largest metro markets show a spread of more than $26,000 at the median, driven mostly by one standout. Here are the BLS (2025) medians and employment counts for the biggest Ohio metros.

Dayton is the outlier, and it isn’t close. At a $105,060 median it pays roughly $26,470 more than Akron and about $24,350 more than Cleveland. The reason is Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the defense and aerospace logistics work that surrounds it. Federal and contractor supply chain roles in that corridor sit well above commercial averages, and they pull the whole metro median up to near the state’s 75th percentile.

Columbus and Cincinnati are the volume markets. Cincinnati employs the most logisticians of any Ohio metro at 1,960, helped by its position as a freight and distribution hub, and Columbus follows at 1,740 with its dense warehouse and e-commerce footprint. Both pay in the low $80,000s at the median, close to the state line. Cleveland and Akron round out the group in the high $70,000s, reflecting a more manufacturing-weighted mix. If you can land defense or aerospace logistics work near Dayton, that’s the clearest geographic pay edge in the state.

Here’s the practical read on these numbers. Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Akron all cluster within about $2,100 of each other at the median, from $78,590 to $80,710. For most logisticians, choosing among those four is really a question of cost of living and commute, since the pay is close to identical. Cincinnati and Columbus offer the most openings by a clear margin, so they carry the lowest job-search risk if you need to land somewhere fast. Akron is the thinnest market at 440 logisticians, which means fewer postings but also less internal competition for the roles that do open.

Dayton deserves a closer look if you’re optimizing for pay. The $105,060 median there is not a small premium, it’s roughly 26 percent above the Cleveland median for the same job title. That gap reflects a genuinely different employer mix rather than a higher cost of living, since Dayton housing costs are among the most affordable of the five metros. The catch is that much of the top-paying work is defense-linked, which can mean security-clearance requirements and federal contractor hiring cycles. If you can clear those hurdles, the Dayton corridor is the single best pay-per-dollar-of-rent market for logisticians in Ohio. Combined, these five metros account for about 6,900 of the state’s 8,990 logistician jobs, so they cover the large majority of where the work actually is.

Take-home pay after tax in Ohio

Gross salary is the headline. What lands in your account is the number that pays rent. Ohio levies a state income tax, but its top rates are modest and the brackets are gentle on middle incomes, so the bite is smaller than in most high-cost states. The table below runs each percentile point through federal income tax, FICA (Social Security and Medicare), and Ohio state tax for the 2026 tax year, assuming a single filer with the standard deduction and no extra withholdings.

At the median, the effective combined tax rate works out to about 21.5 percent, leaving $65,521 a year, or $5,460 a month. Notice how light the Ohio state line is: just $1,579 on an $83,460 salary, under 2 percent of gross. The federal bill and FICA do most of the work. By the senior tier the effective rate rises to 25.8 percent, which is the normal effect of moving into higher federal brackets.

Run the same logic across the whole ladder and the pattern is clear. An entry logistician at $52,000 keeps $43,107, an effective rate of about 17.1 percent. The experienced earner at $105,340 keeps $80,272, or 23.8 percent gone to tax. The senior earner at $131,120 nets $97,251. So the difference between the entry net and the senior net is about $54,144 a year in spendable income, against a gross gap of $79,120. Roughly two-thirds of every additional dollar earned across that range survives tax, which is a useful frame when you’re deciding whether a stretch role is worth the extra hours. The state portion stays small at every tier, ranging from $714 at entry to $3,123 at the top, so Ohio never takes a punishing slice the way some high-tax states do at six figures.

How Ohio stacks up against a no-tax state. Take that same $83,460 median and move it to Texas, which has no state income tax. The Texas take-home comes to $67,100, versus $65,521 in Ohio. That’s a gap of $1,579, the exact size of Ohio’s state tax bill at this income. So a Texas logistician on identical pay keeps about $132 more a month. It’s a real difference, but a small one, and Ohio’s lower housing costs in most metros usually close that gap and then some.

That last point is the one that matters most. Net pay minus local housing is the figure that decides how comfortable a salary actually feels. A $65,521 take-home in Columbus or Dayton, where median rents run well below the coastal markets, stretches further than a bigger gross would in a high-rent city. Before you compare two offers across state lines, run both through the math. You can model your exact Ohio number with the Ohio paycheck calculator, and if you want help squaring withholdings and deductions at filing time, TurboTax walks through the state and federal pieces together.

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How to earn more as a logistician in Ohio

The pay range in this state is wide enough that deliberate moves can add real money. Here are the levers that work, ranked roughly by payoff.

• Target the Dayton aerospace and defense corridor. The Dayton metro median of $105,060 is about $21,600 above the state median. Defense and contractor logistics roles around Wright-Patterson are the single biggest geographic raise available in Ohio.
• Earn a recognized supply chain certification. APICS CPIM and CSCP, and the CLTD designation for transportation and distribution, are the credentials hiring managers know. They map directly to the planning and network skills that separate median roles from the $105,000-plus tier. Structured courses on Coursera cover supply chain analytics, demand planning, and operations management if you’re building toward one.
• Move from coordinator to manager scope. The data shows the largest dollar jumps come with owning a network, a budget, and a team. Push for responsibility over a full lane, region, or distribution center rather than a single function.
• Specialize in analytics and ERP systems. Logisticians who can run demand forecasting, inventory optimization, and systems like SAP or Oracle command the upper percentiles. These are learnable skills with clear salary returns.
• Chase the 75th and 90th percentile employers. Large shippers, third-party logistics providers, and federal contractors pay toward the top of the $105,340 to $131,120 band. Smaller firms cluster nearer the median.
• Negotiate against the state data, not a national average. Walking into a review knowing the Ohio median is $83,460 and the 75th percentile is $105,340 gives you concrete anchors. Generic salary sites understate local figures often enough that the BLS numbers are worth quoting.

Put a rough dollar value on each move and the priorities sort themselves out. Relocating to the Dayton corridor is worth around $21,600 against the state median. Stepping across to a management analyst role is worth $10,810, and a project management specialist role $12,310, both using skills you likely already have. A certification plus the manager-scope jump that usually follows it can carry you from the median into the $105,340 experienced tier, a swing of roughly $21,880. Stacking even two of these is how Ohio logisticians reach the top quartile rather than waiting on annual cost-of-living bumps.

Job outlook for logisticians in Ohio

Ohio’s base of about 8,990 logisticians (BLS, 2025) reflects a state built on distribution, freight, and manufacturing. Columbus and Cincinnati anchor major warehouse and e-commerce networks, and the Dayton defense corridor adds steady federal and contractor demand. That mix of commercial and government work tends to smooth out the hiring cycle, since the two don’t usually slow at the same time.

Supply chain roles broadly have stayed in demand as companies keep investing in resilience and visibility after recent disruptions, and Ohio’s central location keeps it a logistics gateway. If you’re searching, filtering for supply chain analyst, logistics manager, and distribution planner titles on a board like ZipRecruiter surfaces the bulk of the openings across the Columbus, Cincinnati, and Dayton markets.

Related and higher-paying roles in Ohio

If you’re weighing adjacent paths, two analytical roles pay more than logistics in Ohio for overlapping skills. A management analyst earns a median of $94,270, which is $10,810 more than a logistician in Ohio. A project management specialist earns $95,770, which is $12,310 more than a logistician in Ohio. Both lean on the same planning, data, and stakeholder skills logisticians already use, so they’re realistic next steps rather than career changes.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) 2025; federal and Ohio income tax schedules for tax year 2026. Last updated 2026. See our methodology.