Occupation / job
Insulation Workers, Floor, Ceiling, and Wall
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 $49,120 against $50,020, Insulation Workers, Floor, Ceiling, and Wall sits $0.43 an hour under the typical American job. A gap that small is not a reason to choose it or to rule it out; the spread and the entry cost are where the real decision is.
44,440 people are employed in this work. Big enough for a real market in every major metro, small enough that experience in Insulation Workers, Floor, Ceiling, and Wall is still a distinguishing thing to have.
This work suits people who like finishing something physical, can work in weather, and are content that the site rather than the office sets the hours.
How long it takes to become one of the 44,440 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.
Who should not do this
A quarter of Insulation Workers, Floor, Ceiling, and Wall earn under $43,200 and a quarter over $60,980 — 1.4x, or $17,780 apart. Narrow spreads usually mean a pay schedule, which is stability bought at the price of upside.
Even the bottom quarter, under $43,200, lands within $6,820 of the $50,020 typical American wage. The downside of Insulation Workers, Floor, Ceiling, and Wall is not really the money.
Avoid it if a gap between projects would leave you without income you could not cover.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 44,440 figure counts people already working as Insulation Workers, Floor, Ceiling, and Wall, 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
The quarters are $43,200 and $60,980, a ratio of 1.4x. In a distribution this narrow, the biggest single lever on your pay in Insulation Workers, Floor, Ceiling, and Wall is the cost of living where you do it.
The middle half of this field earns between $43,200 and $60,980. That is $17,780 of range, with $49,120 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Getting to $60,980, the 75th percentile, is worth $11,860 a year more than the $49,120 midpoint and $17,780 more than the $43,200 a quarter of Insulation Workers, Floor, Ceiling, and Wall settle for.
The upper half of the middle range — $49,120 to $60,980, or $11,860 — is far longer than the lower half at $5,920. In a shape like this an average would flatter Insulation Workers, Floor, Ceiling, and Wall considerably, and would describe nobody.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Insulation Workers, Floor, Ceiling, and Wall is $23.61 an hour. The quarters sit at $20.76 and $29.31, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $49,120 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 $49,120 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Insulation Workers, Floor, Ceiling, and Wall, 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