Occupation / job
Fashion Designers
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 $80,960 against a $50,020 national midpoint, Fashion Designers pays 62% more than the typical American job — $30,940 a year of difference. Read the entry requirements before the number.
At 21,450 employed, this is a mid-sized occupation. In a normal city that means several possible employers and a genuine market rate, which is the point at which knowing the numbers on this page starts to be worth money.
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 Fashion Designers — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
At 2.0x, from $51,940 to $106,470, the two halves of Fashion Designers are not really doing the same job. $4,544 a month separates them, and something other than the title explains it.
Even the 25th percentile pays $51,940, $1,920 more than the $50,020 typical American job and $24.97 an hour. The floor, not the median, is the strongest financial argument for Fashion Designers.
Avoid it if you need creative control; you are being paid for someone else’s outcome.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 21,450 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
At 2.0x the range from $51,940 to $106,470 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 $80,960 midpoint.
In cash terms the middle half of Fashion Designers runs $51,940 to $106,470 — $54,530 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $80,960.
Getting to $106,470, the 75th percentile, is worth $25,510 a year more than the $80,960 midpoint and $54,530 more than the $51,940 a quarter of Fashion Designers settle for.
The fall from $80,960 to the $51,940 bottom quarter is $29,020; the climb to the $106,470 top quarter is $25,510. Slightly more of the range lies below the midpoint than above it, so the downside is the bigger movement here.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $38.92 at the midpoint for Fashion Designers, $24.97 at the 25th percentile and $51.18 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Fashion Designers. The self-employed are excluded, so $80,960 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $80,960 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