Occupation / job
Helpers--Carpenters
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
Helpers--Carpenters pays a median $43,780 against $50,020 across all occupations — $3.00 an hour of difference. At that distance the deciding variable is where you do it, not how long you have done it.
At 21,680 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.
Helper roles are the paid entrance to a trade. They suit people who will trade a low starting rate for time on a site next to someone who already knows how the work is done.
No verified preparation time is on file for Helpers--Carpenters. 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
The quarters sit at $36,730 and $49,400, $1,055 a month apart at a ratio of 1.3x. Narrow enough that what you can expect is close to what everyone else gets.
The 25th percentile is $36,730 — $17.65 an hour, and $13,290 below the $50,020 typical American job. Entry-level in this field means that number, not the midpoint, so budget against it.
Avoid it if you need the entry rate to be liveable immediately — the helper year is deliberately the cheap one.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 21,680 figure counts people already working as Helpers--Carpenters, 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
A 1.3x spread means the top quarter of Helpers--Carpenters is not doing a different job from the bottom quarter, just a slightly better-paid version of the same one. Between $36,730 and $49,400 is the whole of the negotiation.
The middle half of this field earns between $36,730 and $49,400. That is $12,670 of range, with $43,780 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Between $36,730 and $49,400 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $43,780. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $5,620; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $12,670.
The fall from $43,780 to the $36,730 bottom quarter is $7,050; the climb to the $49,400 top quarter is $5,620. Slightly more of the range lies below the midpoint than above it, so the downside is the bigger movement here.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $17.65 at the bottom quarter, $21.04 at the midpoint, $23.75 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $43,780 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.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $43,780 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