Historians

A midpoint of $76,750 against $50,020 means Historians pays $2,227 a month more than the typical American job. At that distance the entry requirement is the real subject, because it is what the premium is buying.

With 3,450 employed nationally, Historians 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.

This work suits people who can hold a research question steady through the years it takes to answer, and who are comfortable that the answer may be politically inconvenient.

How long it takes to become one of the 3,450 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.

A quarter of the field earns under $57,290 and a quarter over $99,990: $42,700 between them, a ratio of 1.7x. Wide enough that the first offer you get tells you more about your prospects than the median does.

At $57,290, or $27.54 an hour, the 25th percentile sits $7,270 above the $50,020 the typical American job pays. Occupations with floors this high almost always have a requirement holding them there.

Avoid it if you would find it hard to publish a finding that a funder, a discipline or the public did not want.

No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 3,450 figure counts people already working as Historians, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.

From $57,290 to $99,990 at a ratio of 1.7x is wide enough that two people with the same job title have materially different jobs. $76,750 sits in the middle of that and describes neither of them especially well.

In cash terms the middle half of Historians runs $57,290 to $99,990 — $42,700 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $76,750.

Getting to $99,990, the 75th percentile, is worth $23,240 a year more than the $76,750 midpoint and $42,700 more than the $57,290 a quarter of Historians settle for.

The climb from $76,750 to $99,990 is $23,240; the drop to $57,290 is $19,460. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Historians and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.

Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $27.54 at the bottom quarter, $36.89 at the midpoint, $48.07 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.