Occupation / job
Locksmiths and Safe Repairers
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
Locksmiths and Safe Repairers pays $51,320 at the midpoint against $50,020 across all occupations. The headline argues neither for nor against it; the case has to be made on the spread, the entry cost and what the day is actually like.
Nationally 15,040 people do this. That is a real occupation with a thin local presence — enough that Locksmiths and Safe Repairers is a career, not enough that you can assume a second employer down the road.
These roles suit people who want to be the one who keeps things running, in work where competence is obvious to everyone around you within about a week.
We carry no verified training length for Locksmiths and Safe Repairers — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
A quarter of Locksmiths and Safe Repairers earn under $43,160 and a quarter over $64,560 — 1.5x, or $21,400 apart. Narrow spreads usually mean a pay schedule, which is stability bought at the price of upside.
A quarter of Locksmiths and Safe Repairers earn less than $43,160, $6,860 off the $50,020 national midpoint — $20.75 an hour. The floor here is close enough to ordinary that the case against this work, if there is one, is not financial.
Avoid it if you would find it demoralising to arrive only when something has already failed.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 15,040 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
$43,160 to $64,560 is a 1.5x range. Ranges this tight usually mean the employer set is homogeneous — the same kind of organisation paying the same kind of scale — so the lever you have is geography rather than employer.
Put in money rather than ratios: $43,160 at the 25th percentile, $51,320 at the midpoint, $64,560 at the 75th. $21,400 separates the quarter of Locksmiths and Safe Repairers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $64,560, the 75th percentile, is worth $13,240 a year more than the $51,320 midpoint and $21,400 more than the $43,160 a quarter of Locksmiths and Safe Repairers settle for.
The distance from the midpoint up to $64,560 is $13,240 — well over the $8,160 down to $43,160. Distributions leaning this way mean the median understates what the upper half of Locksmiths and Safe Repairers earns, and half the field is in that upper half.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Locksmiths and Safe Repairers is $24.67 an hour. The quarters sit at $20.75 and $31.03, 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 Locksmiths and Safe Repairers for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $51,320 describes them.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $51,320 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else