Carpenters

Carpenters pays $60,580 against $50,020 across all occupations — $880 a month more. Every premium is paid for something: find out whether it is the schooling, the licence, the hours or the risk before you decide you want it.

670,090 people do this work. An occupation this large has a published, well-known going rate — which means less scope to be underpaid and less scope to negotiate above it.

This work suits people who like finishing something physical, can work in weather, and are content that the site rather than the office sets the hours.

We carry no verified training length for Carpenters — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.

A quarter earn below $48,510 and a quarter above $76,830: a 1.6x ratio, $28,320 between the ends. That is an ordinary working spread, which also means experience and location explain most of it and there is no shortcut through the middle.

At $48,510, or $23.32 an hour, the bottom quarter of this work lands within $1,510 of the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — an unusually solid floor.

Avoid it if a gap between projects would leave you without income you could not cover.

There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 670,090 people employed as Carpenters; 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.

A 1.6x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $60,580 as where you might be after years in Carpenters, and $48,510 as where you would start.

Put in money rather than ratios: $48,510 at the 25th percentile, $60,580 at the midpoint, $76,830 at the 75th. $28,320 separates the quarter of Carpenters at the bottom from the quarter at the top.

Between $48,510 and $76,830 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $60,580. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $16,250; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $28,320.

The climb from $60,580 to $76,830 is $16,250; the drop to $48,510 is $12,070. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Carpenters and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.

Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $23.32 at the bottom quarter, $29.12 at the midpoint, $36.93 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.