Occupation / job
Model Makers, Wood
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 $56,550 midpoint puts Model Makers, Wood $544 a month ahead of the $50,020 typical American job. Real, but small enough that a change of employer or metro would move it as much as the occupation itself does.
280 people hold this job in the entire country. An occupation that small does not advertise: you get into Model Makers, Wood by being known to the handful of places that employ them, which makes the network the qualification.
Woodworking suits people who want a finished object at the end of the day and can work to a tolerance in a material that moves with the weather.
How long it takes to become one of the 280 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
From under $37,660 to over $87,150 — $49,490 between the quarters, a 2.3x ratio. A range that wide is not one job with variation in it; it is a label covering several different jobs, and the entry-level version is the one you should cost.
The 25th percentile is $37,660 — $18.10 an hour, and $12,360 below the $50,020 typical American job. Entry-level in this field means that number, not the midpoint, so budget against it.
Avoid it if dust, noise and machine risk are not acceptable to you every day for the whole of a career.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 280 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
A ratio of 2.3x between $37,660 and $87,150 means the top of this occupation and the bottom of it are barely the same labour market. $56,550 is arithmetically the middle and practically a description of very few people.
Put in money rather than ratios: $37,660 at the 25th percentile, $56,550 at the midpoint, $87,150 at the 75th. $49,490 separates the quarter of Model Makers, Wood at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $87,150, the 75th percentile, is worth $30,600 a year more than the $56,550 midpoint and $49,490 more than the $37,660 a quarter of Model Makers, Wood settle for.
The distance from the midpoint up to $87,150 is $30,600 — well over the $18,890 down to $37,660. Distributions leaning this way mean the median understates what the upper half of Model Makers, Wood earns, and half the field is in that upper half.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Model Makers, Wood is $27.18 an hour. The quarters sit at $18.10 and $41.89, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Model Makers, Wood. The self-employed are excluded, so $56,550 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
The hourly number on this page is $56,550 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Model Makers, Wood, 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