Occupation / job
Carpet Installers
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
With a $50,340 median against a $50,020 national one, Carpet Installers is an average-paying occupation by construction — $26 a month either way. What separates it from the alternatives is not on this line.
13,780 people work as Carpet Installers. That is enough for a functioning national market and not enough for a functioning local one — in most metros this is a few employers rather than a field you can move around inside.
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.
How long it takes to become one of the 13,780 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.
Who should not do this
From $41,970 to $66,320 is $2,029 a month, or 1.6x 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.
Even the bottom quarter, under $41,970, lands within $8,050 of the $50,020 typical American wage. The downside of Carpet Installers is not really the money.
Avoid it if you have an existing back, knee or shoulder injury, or if intermittent layoffs between projects would be unmanageable.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 13,780 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
1.6x between $41,970 and $66,320 is the ordinary shape of an occupation where experience and region both matter and neither dominates. $50,340 is a fair expectation by mid-career, not on day one.
In cash terms the middle half of Carpet Installers runs $41,970 to $66,320 — $24,350 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $50,340.
Between $41,970 and $66,320 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $50,340. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $15,980; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $24,350.
The upper half of the middle range — $50,340 to $66,320, or $15,980 — is far longer than the lower half at $8,370. In a shape like this an average would flatter Carpet Installers considerably, and would describe nobody.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Carpet Installers is $24.20 an hour. The quarters sit at $20.17 and $31.88, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $50,340 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.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $50,340 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else