Occupation / job
Millwrights
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 midpoint of $65,700 against $50,020 means Millwrights pays $1,306 a month more than the typical American job. At that distance the entry requirement is the real subject, because it is what the premium is buying.
40,330 people are employed as Millwrights. At that scale every large metro has a real market, and the difference between a good year and a bad one is usually which employer you are at rather than whether anyone is hiring.
This work suits people who like variety in the fault rather than variety in the setting, and who would rather fix than build.
We carry no verified training length for Millwrights — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
Between $56,390 and $81,500 there is $25,110, a ratio of 1.4x. Tight distributions are predictable, and predictable cuts both ways: little risk of being badly underpaid, little prospect of doing much better.
At $56,390, or $27.11 an hour, the 25th percentile sits $6,370 above the $50,020 the typical American job pays. Occupations with floors this high almost always have a requirement holding them there.
Avoid it if you need to be off duty; this is a category of work that gets called at inconvenient hours by definition.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 40,330 people employed as Millwrights; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
$56,390 to $81,500 is a 1.4x 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: $56,390 at the 25th percentile, $65,700 at the midpoint, $81,500 at the 75th. $25,110 separates the quarter of Millwrights at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $81,500. Reaching it from the $65,700 midpoint is $15,800 a year; reaching it from the $56,390 that the bottom quarter of Millwrights earn is $25,110.
It is $9,310 from $65,700 down to $56,390 but $15,800 up to $81,500. When a range leans this far upward, the interesting question is what puts someone in the top half, because the money is disproportionately there.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Millwrights is $31.58 an hour. The quarters sit at $27.11 and $39.18, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $65,700 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 $65,700 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Millwrights, 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