Occupation / job
Cost Estimators
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
Cost Estimators pays $78,740 at the midpoint, 57% above the $50,020 national figure. Premiums that size are rationed by something; find out what before the salary does your thinking for you.
224,220 people are employed as Cost Estimators. At that size there is a real ladder and enough churn that experience can be sold to a competitor rather than only accumulated where you are.
Business operations work suits people who make a process legible to everyone who touches it — the deliverable is usually a decision someone else can now make quickly.
We carry no verified training length for Cost Estimators — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
$61,150 to $101,850 — 1.7x, or $3,391 a month between the quarters. An unremarkable spread, which means the useful planning number for Cost Estimators is the bottom of it rather than the middle.
At $61,150, or $29.39 an hour, the 25th percentile sits $11,130 above the $50,020 the typical American job pays. Occupations with floors this high almost always have a requirement holding them there.
Avoid it if being responsible for an outcome you cannot directly control would frustrate you.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 224,220 people employed as Cost Estimators; 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 1.7x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $78,740 as where you might be after years in Cost Estimators, and $61,150 as where you would start.
Put in money rather than ratios: $61,150 at the 25th percentile, $78,740 at the midpoint, $101,850 at the 75th. $40,700 separates the quarter of Cost Estimators at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $101,850, the 75th percentile, is worth $23,110 a year more than the $78,740 midpoint and $40,700 more than the $61,150 a quarter of Cost Estimators settle for.
The climb from $78,740 to $101,850 is $23,110; the drop to $61,150 is $17,590. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Cost Estimators and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $37.85 at the midpoint for Cost Estimators, $29.39 at the 25th percentile and $48.96 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $78,740 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.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Cost Estimators, the hourly figure is $78,740 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else