Occupation / job
Craft Artists
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
At $46,080, Craft Artists lands just under the $50,020 national midpoint — $3,940 apart, inside the range a single promotion or a move between states closes.
With 4,580 employed nationally, Craft Artists 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.
These roles suit people who can work to somebody else’s objective without losing the standard they hold their own work to.
We carry no verified training length for Craft Artists — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
From $35,020 to $58,240 is $1,935 a month, or 1.7x 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.
A quarter of the field earns under $35,020 — $15,000 below the $50,020 the typical American job pays. That is the number to plan on for a first year, not the midpoint.
Avoid it if revision by committee would demoralise you — the final version is rarely the one you would have chosen.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 4,580 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
1.7x between $35,020 and $58,240 is the ordinary shape of an occupation where experience and region both matter and neither dominates. $46,080 is a fair expectation by mid-career, not on day one.
Put in money rather than ratios: $35,020 at the 25th percentile, $46,080 at the midpoint, $58,240 at the 75th. $23,220 separates the quarter of Craft Artists at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $58,240. Reaching it from the $46,080 midpoint is $12,160 a year; reaching it from the $35,020 that the bottom quarter of Craft Artists earn is $23,220.
$46,080 sits almost exactly in the middle of its own range — $11,060 above the bottom quarter, $12,160 below the top one. A symmetric distribution like this is the case where the median genuinely does describe the typical person.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $22.15 at the midpoint for Craft Artists, $16.83 at the 25th percentile and $28.00 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
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 Craft Artists for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $46,080 describes them.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $46,080 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