Occupation / job
Clergy
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
The $60,810 midpoint sits $5.18 an hour above the $50,020 typical American job. That is a 22% premium, and premiums are rationed: whatever rations this one is the thing standing between you and Clergy.
57,200 people are employed as Clergy. At that scale every large metro has a real market, and the difference between a good year and a bad one is usually which employer you are at rather than whether anyone is hiring.
Religious work suits people whose reason for doing it would survive the pay being lower, because the role is available at almost any hour and the boundary has to be set by you.
How long it takes to become one of the 57,200 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
$48,260 to $76,640 — 1.6x, or $2,365 a month between the quarters. An unremarkable spread, which means the useful planning number for Clergy is the bottom of it rather than the middle.
At $48,260, or $23.20 an hour, the bottom quarter of this work lands within $1,760 of the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — an unusually solid floor.
Avoid it if you need a boundary between your work and your private life; in this role the community does not observe one.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 57,200 people employed as Clergy; 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
A 1.6x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $60,810 as where you might be after years in Clergy, and $48,260 as where you would start.
In cash terms the middle half of Clergy runs $48,260 to $76,640 — $28,380 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $60,810.
The 75th percentile is $76,640. Reaching it from the $60,810 midpoint is $15,830 a year; reaching it from the $48,260 that the bottom quarter of Clergy earn is $28,380.
From $60,810 it is $12,550 down to the bottom quarter and $15,830 up to the top. The upper half of the range is the longer one, which is the ordinary shape for work where experience compounds.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Clergy is $29.23 an hour. The quarters sit at $23.20 and $36.84, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Clergy for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $60,810 describes them.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $60,810 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