Occupation / job
Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products
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
A median of $35,730 against the $50,020 all-occupation figure leaves Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products 29% behind — $14,290 across a year. Whether that is workable depends almost entirely on where you would be doing it.
25,180 people do this work nationally. That is the size at which Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products becomes a career rather than a post — enough employers in a normal city that leaving one of them is a decision rather than a crisis.
Agricultural work suits people who accept weather, season and commodity prices as the terms of employment rather than as bad luck.
No verified preparation time is on file for Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
From $34,320 to $38,260 is only $3,940 — a 1.1x ratio. If your reason for considering Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products is that you would be good at it, note that the data shows very little money attached to being good at it.
Under $34,320 is where a quarter of this field sits, $15,700 beneath the $50,020 a typical American job pays. The risk in Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products is not the average outcome, it is how long you might spend in the bottom quarter before leaving it.
Avoid it if seasonal income and weather-dependent work would destabilise your household budget.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 25,180 people employed as Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products; 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
Only 1.1x separates $34,320 from $38,260. That is a scale, not a market: what you are offered in Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products will be very close to $35,730 regardless of what you bring to it.
Put in money rather than ratios: $34,320 at the 25th percentile, $35,730 at the midpoint, $38,260 at the 75th. $3,940 separates the quarter of Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $38,260. Reaching it from the $35,730 midpoint is $2,530 a year; reaching it from the $34,320 that the bottom quarter of Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products earn is $3,940.
The distance from the midpoint up to $38,260 is $2,530 — well over the $1,410 down to $34,320. Distributions leaning this way mean the median understates what the upper half of Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products earns, and half the field is in that upper half.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products is $17.17 an hour. The quarters sit at $16.50 and $18.39, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products. The self-employed are excluded, so $35,730 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 $35,730 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