Choreographers

A $55,310 midpoint puts Choreographers $440 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 2,860 employed nationally, Choreographers is a small occupation. Small occupations are quiet: few postings, slow turnover, and a real chance that the person you would replace is not going anywhere.

Performing and sport suit people who can separate the quality of the work from its reception, because the two come apart constantly and the money tracks the second one.

How long it takes to become one of the 2,860 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 quarters sit at $41,600 and $75,710 — 1.8x, or $2,842 a month apart. At that width the occupation contains genuinely different jobs, and which one you are being offered matters more than the title does.

The 25th percentile of $41,600 is only $8,420 off the $50,020 national midpoint. Being in the worst-paid quarter of Choreographers still means being paid close to what the average American job pays.

Avoid it if you need income stability in your twenties, or cannot personally fund the years before the work is paid properly.

There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 2,860 people employed as Choreographers; 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.

At 1.8x, the distribution for Choreographers is open enough that specialisation starts to pay. The distance from $41,600 to $75,710 is mostly what you can do that others in the same title cannot.

In cash terms the middle half of Choreographers runs $41,600 to $75,710 — $34,110 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $55,310.

Between $41,600 and $75,710 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $55,310. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $20,400; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $34,110.

$20,400 separates $55,310 from the $75,710 top quarter, while only $13,710 separates it from $41,600. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Choreographers has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.

On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Choreographers is $26.59 an hour. The quarters sit at $20.00 and $36.39, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.