Occupation / job
Librarians and Media Collections Specialists
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
Librarians and Media Collections Specialists pays $68,270 at the midpoint, 36% above the $50,020 national figure. Premiums that size are rationed by something; find out what before the salary does your thinking for you.
National employment is 133,790. At that scale hiring is continuous, the market rate is well established, and your leverage comes from being credibly willing to go somewhere else.
Library, curatorial and archival work suits people who get satisfaction from making a collection findable, which is invisible labour that only ever gets noticed when it has not been done.
We carry no verified training length for Librarians and Media Collections Specialists — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
From $56,310 to $84,480 is $2,347 a month, or 1.5x bottom quarter to top. An ordinary spread like this is mostly years and geography; assume you enter near the bottom of it and that closing the gap takes a career rather than a move.
The bottom quarter of Librarians and Media Collections Specialists earns $56,310 or more — $6,290 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Three quarters of the field is well paid and the last quarter is still paid better than most of the country.
Avoid it if you need a growing field — the posts are competitive and often the first line cut when a budget tightens.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 133,790 figure counts people already working as Librarians and Media Collections Specialists, 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 1.5x between $56,310 and $84,480 this is a normally shaped occupation. $68,270 is what the middle of Librarians and Media Collections Specialists 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 Librarians and Media Collections Specialists runs $56,310 to $84,480 — $28,170 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $68,270.
The 75th percentile is $84,480. Reaching it from the $68,270 midpoint is $16,210 a year; reaching it from the $56,310 that the bottom quarter of Librarians and Media Collections Specialists earn is $28,170.
The climb from $68,270 to $84,480 is $16,210, against $11,960 down to $56,310. Rather more of the range sits above the midpoint than below it, so the realistic upside in Librarians and Media Collections Specialists is larger than the realistic downside.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Librarians and Media Collections Specialists is $32.82 an hour. The quarters sit at $27.07 and $40.61, 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 Librarians and Media Collections Specialists for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $68,270 describes them.
The hourly number on this page is $68,270 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Librarians and Media Collections Specialists, 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