Occupation / job
Motorcycle Mechanics
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
Motorcycle Mechanics pays $48,580, effectively level with the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — $1,440 apart, which is inside the noise of a single year’s survey. Treat this as an average-paying occupation and decide it on everything else.
Employment as Motorcycle Mechanics is 13,510 nationally. At that size a large city holds a working market and a small one holds almost none, so where you live changes the number of employers available to you by an order of magnitude.
This work suits people who want a trade with immediate feedback and a customer who can see the result, and who do not mind being dirty at the end of the day.
How long it takes to become one of the 13,510 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
A quarter earn below $39,550 and a quarter above $61,510: a 1.6x ratio, $21,960 between the ends. That is an ordinary working spread, which also means experience and location explain most of it and there is no shortcut through the middle.
The 25th percentile is $39,550 — $19.01 an hour, and $10,470 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 flat-rate pay would frustrate you — being paid the book time rather than the actual time cuts both ways.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 13,510 figure counts people already working as Motorcycle Mechanics, 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 1.6x between $39,550 and $61,510 this is a normally shaped occupation. $48,580 is what the middle of Motorcycle Mechanics earns after the years it takes to get there, which is not the same as what it offers you now.
The middle half of this field earns between $39,550 and $61,510. That is $21,960 of range, with $48,580 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Between $39,550 and $61,510 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $48,580. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $12,930; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $21,960.
The climb from $48,580 to $61,510 is $12,930, against $9,030 down to $39,550. Rather more of the range sits above the midpoint than below it, so the realistic upside in Motorcycle Mechanics is larger than the realistic downside.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $23.35 at the midpoint for Motorcycle Mechanics, $19.01 at the 25th percentile and $29.57 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
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 Motorcycle Mechanics for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $48,580 describes them.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $48,580 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