Occupation / job
Insulation Workers, Mechanical
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 $58,340 midpoint puts Insulation Workers, Mechanical $8,320 above the $50,020 typical American job — a 17% premium paid for the training, the licence or the conditions. It is not free money and it disappears the moment you stop meeting the requirement.
25,660 people do this work nationally. That is the size at which Insulation Workers, Mechanical 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.
These trades suit people who want a skill that is portable, credentialed by doing rather than by studying, and demonstrably useful to somebody in every town.
How long it takes to become one of the 25,660 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
$48,100 to $77,360 — 1.6x, or $2,438 a month between the quarters. An unremarkable spread, which means the useful planning number for Insulation Workers, Mechanical is the bottom of it rather than the middle.
At $48,100 — $23.12 an hour — the 25th percentile of this field sits essentially at the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint. Being in the bottom quarter of Insulation Workers, Mechanical still means being paid like the average American worker.
Avoid it if the cumulative physical wear is not something you have thought about honestly at the age you would be finishing.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 25,660 figure counts people already working as Insulation Workers, Mechanical, 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
At 1.6x between $48,100 and $77,360 this is a normally shaped occupation. $58,340 is what the middle of Insulation Workers, Mechanical earns after the years it takes to get there, which is not the same as what it offers you now.
In cash terms the middle half of Insulation Workers, Mechanical runs $48,100 to $77,360 — $29,260 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $58,340.
Getting to $77,360, the 75th percentile, is worth $19,020 a year more than the $58,340 midpoint and $29,260 more than the $48,100 a quarter of Insulation Workers, Mechanical settle for.
The distance from the midpoint up to $77,360 is $19,020 — well over the $10,240 down to $48,100. Distributions leaning this way mean the median understates what the upper half of Insulation Workers, Mechanical earns, and half the field is in that upper half.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Insulation Workers, Mechanical is $28.04 an hour. The quarters sit at $23.12 and $37.19, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Insulation Workers, Mechanical for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $58,340 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Insulation Workers, Mechanical, the hourly figure is $58,340 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else