Agents and Business Managers of Artists, Performers, and Athletes

$82,890 is $2,739 a month above the $50,020 the typical American job pays. Differences of that size in Agents and Business Managers of Artists, Performers, and Athletes are held in place by a barrier — a licence, a residency, a clearance — and the barrier is the real subject of this page.

Nationally 12,620 people do this. That is a real occupation with a thin local presence — enough that Agents and Business Managers of Artists, Performers, and Athletes is a career, not enough that you can assume a second employer down the road.

This work suits people who can turn a mess into a plan and then get others to follow it without having the authority to compel anyone.

How long it takes to become one of the 12,620 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.

The gap between the bottom quarter of Agents and Business Managers of Artists, Performers, and Athletes at $63,670 and the top quarter at $146,430 is $82,760 — a ratio of 2.3x. Wide enough that the headline median describes almost nobody, and treating it as your number is a planning error.

Even the bottom quarter of Agents and Business Managers of Artists, Performers, and Athletes earns $63,670 — $30.61 an hour and $13,650 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Very little of this distribution is badly paid.

Avoid it if you need authority to match responsibility — much of this work is influencing people who do not report to you.

No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 12,620 figure counts people already working as Agents and Business Managers of Artists, Performers, and Athletes, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.

At 2.3x the range from $63,670 to $146,430 is doing more explaining than the job title is. Something sorts people across that distance — sector, speciality, or who employs them — and finding out what it is matters more than the $82,890 midpoint.

The middle half of this field earns between $63,670 and $146,430. That is $82,760 of range, with $82,890 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.

Getting to $146,430, the 75th percentile, is worth $63,540 a year more than the $82,890 midpoint and $82,760 more than the $63,670 a quarter of Agents and Business Managers of Artists, Performers, and Athletes settle for.

The top quarter of Agents and Business Managers of Artists, Performers, and Athletes begins $63,540 above the $82,890 midpoint, while the bottom quarter starts only $19,220 below it. A range stretched that far in one direction is the signature of a field where a small group earns a great deal more than the middle does.

Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $39.85 at the midpoint for Agents and Business Managers of Artists, Performers, and Athletes, $30.61 at the 25th percentile and $70.39 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.