Occupation / job
Automotive Body and Related Repairers
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
A $54,890 midpoint puts Automotive Body and Related Repairers $405 a month ahead of the $50,020 typical American job. Real, but small enough that a change of employer or metro would move it as much as the occupation itself does.
With 149,310 in the occupation, Automotive Body and Related Repairers is a big field with a visible internal market. Big fields reward moving: the pay you can negotiate on arrival usually beats what the annual review will give you for staying.
This work suits people who want a trade with immediate feedback and a customer who can see the result, and who do not mind being dirty at the end of the day.
No verified preparation time is on file for Automotive Body and Related Repairers. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
From $45,750 to $69,200 is $1,954 a month, or 1.5x bottom quarter to top. An ordinary spread like this is mostly years and geography; assume you enter near the bottom of it and that closing the gap takes a career rather than a move.
At $45,750 — $21.99 an hour — the 25th percentile of this field sits essentially at the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint. Being in the bottom quarter of Automotive Body and Related Repairers still means being paid like the average American worker.
Avoid it if you would resent buying your own tools, which in this trade is a real and recurring cost.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 149,310 people employed as Automotive Body and Related Repairers; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
1.5x between $45,750 and $69,200 is the ordinary shape of an occupation where experience and region both matter and neither dominates. $54,890 is a fair expectation by mid-career, not on day one.
In cash terms the middle half of Automotive Body and Related Repairers runs $45,750 to $69,200 — $23,450 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $54,890.
The 75th percentile is $69,200. Reaching it from the $54,890 midpoint is $14,310 a year; reaching it from the $45,750 that the bottom quarter of Automotive Body and Related Repairers earn is $23,450.
The distance from the midpoint up to $69,200 is $14,310 — well over the $9,140 down to $45,750. Distributions leaning this way mean the median understates what the upper half of Automotive Body and Related Repairers earns, and half the field is in that upper half.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $21.99 at the bottom quarter, $26.38 at the midpoint, $33.26 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $54,890 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
The hourly number on this page is $54,890 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Automotive Body and Related Repairers, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else