Apparel Manufacturing

At the midpoint this work grossed $11,880 for the year — $990 a month in revenue. That is a real second income and a long way short of a first one, and Census cannot tell you which of those the typical filer intended.

28,374 filings sit behind this code — a workforce the size of a mid-sized occupation that no payroll survey counts, because none of it runs through a payroll.

2,525 filers cleared $100,000, which is 8.9% of everyone under this code. A share that size means Apparel Manufacturing supports a genuine professional tier, and the question becomes what puts someone in it.

Independent apparel work suits people with genuine hand skill selling into a market where almost everything competing with them was made somewhere with lower costs.

Nothing stops anyone filing under this code, and 28,374 people did. Free entry is why the lower bands are as full as they are: the distribution below counts everyone who tried, not everyone who was ready.

8.1x between the quarters — $4,217 against $34,357, or $2,511 a month. This is the shape of a field where a minority does very well and the summary statistics quietly borrow their success.

The bottom quarter of Apparel Manufacturing earns under $4,217 — $45,803 below the $50,020 a typical American job pays. Entering at the bottom and waiting is a live risk here, not a theoretical one, and some people never leave that quarter.

Do not start this competing on price. Against imported volume that comparison is lost before you begin.

Of the 28,374 people who filed as Apparel Manufacturing in 2022, 47.1% grossed under $10,000 for the year — 13,361 people who did not clear a part-time wage in revenue, let alone in profit.

That share is a floor, not an estimate: $10,000 is revenue, not earnings. Everyone counted inside it kept less than $10,000, and an unknown number of the filers above it also finished the year with nothing after costs.

At 8.1x, the gap between $4,217 and $34,357 is the shape of a field with a small, well-paid top. $11,880 is real and it is not a forecast — the people quoting the upper end at you are describing a minority.

In cash terms the middle half of Apparel Manufacturing runs $4,217 to $34,357 — $30,140 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $11,880.

Between $4,217 and $34,357 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $11,880. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $22,477; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $30,140.

$7,663 below the midpoint, $22,477 above it. That asymmetry is extreme even for this data, and it means every summary of Apparel Manufacturing that is not a median — including any average you see quoted elsewhere — is describing the top of the range rather than the middle.

Converted to a 2,080-hour year, the receipts run $2.02 an hour at the 25th percentile, $5.71 at the midpoint and $16.51 at the 75th. Read them as revenue per hour worked; the equivalent wage is lower by whatever this work costs to do.

Counted straight off the return: 8,410 filers grossed under $5,000, 4,952 took $5,000 to $9,999, 6,583 took $10,000 to $24,999, 2,517 cleared $100,000 and 819 cleared $250,000.