Occupation / job
Fabric and Apparel Patternmakers
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 $62,750 midpoint sits $6.12 an hour above the $50,020 typical American job. That is a 25% premium, and premiums are rationed: whatever rations this one is the thing standing between you and Fabric and Apparel Patternmakers.
National employment of 2,950 makes this a small field. Small fields are relationship markets: the people already in Fabric and Apparel Patternmakers tend to know who is hiring before the posting exists.
These roles suit people with real speed and hand accuracy who want piece work they can see the result of, in a domestic industry much smaller than it once was.
We carry no verified training length for Fabric and Apparel Patternmakers — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
The gap between the bottom quarter of Fabric and Apparel Patternmakers at $42,620 and the top quarter at $93,930 is $51,310 — a ratio of 2.2x. Wide enough that the headline median describes almost nobody, and treating it as your number is a planning error.
A quarter of Fabric and Apparel Patternmakers earn less than $42,620, $7,400 off the $50,020 national midpoint — $20.49 an hour. The floor here is close enough to ordinary that the case against this work, if there is one, is not financial.
Avoid it if you need a field with domestic depth; much of this production has moved offshore and stayed there.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 2,950 figure counts people already working as Fabric and Apparel Patternmakers, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
At 2.2x the range from $42,620 to $93,930 is doing more explaining than the job title is. Something sorts people across that distance — sector, speciality, or who employs them — and finding out what it is matters more than the $62,750 midpoint.
In cash terms the middle half of Fabric and Apparel Patternmakers runs $42,620 to $93,930 — $51,310 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $62,750.
The 75th percentile is $93,930. Reaching it from the $62,750 midpoint is $31,180 a year; reaching it from the $42,620 that the bottom quarter of Fabric and Apparel Patternmakers earn is $51,310.
$31,180 separates $62,750 from the $93,930 top quarter, while only $20,130 separates it from $42,620. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Fabric and Apparel Patternmakers has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Fabric and Apparel Patternmakers is $30.16 an hour. The quarters sit at $20.49 and $45.15, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $62,750 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.
The hourly number on this page is $62,750 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Fabric and Apparel Patternmakers, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else