Occupation / job
Library Technicians
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
$44,580 against a $50,020 all-occupation midpoint puts Library Technicians $453 a month below the middle of the American labour market — close enough that the spread below matters more to your outcome than the headline does.
68,690 people are employed in this work. Big enough for a real market in every major metro, small enough that experience in Library Technicians is still a distinguishing thing to have.
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.
No verified preparation time is on file for Library Technicians. 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
Between $35,740 and $52,430 there is $16,690, a ratio of 1.5x. Tight distributions are predictable, and predictable cuts both ways: little risk of being badly underpaid, little prospect of doing much better.
A quarter of the field earns under $35,740 — $14,280 below the $50,020 the typical American job pays. That is the number to plan on for a first year, not the midpoint.
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 68,690 figure counts people already working as Library Technicians, 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 $35,740 and $52,430, a ratio of 1.5x. In a distribution this narrow, the biggest single lever on your pay in Library Technicians is the cost of living where you do it.
In cash terms the middle half of Library Technicians runs $35,740 to $52,430 — $16,690 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $44,580.
The 75th percentile is $52,430. Reaching it from the $44,580 midpoint is $7,850 a year; reaching it from the $35,740 that the bottom quarter of Library Technicians earn is $16,690.
There is $8,840 between $35,740 and $44,580, and $7,850 between $44,580 and $52,430. The lower half of the range is marginally the longer one — worth knowing if you would be entering Library Technicians at the bottom of it.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $17.18 at the bottom quarter, $21.43 at the midpoint, $25.20 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
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Library Technicians. The self-employed are excluded, so $44,580 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Library Technicians, the hourly figure is $44,580 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