Occupation / job
Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners
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
At $46,420, Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners lands just under the $50,020 national midpoint — $3,600 apart, inside the range a single promotion or a move between states closes.
Employment as Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners stands at 5,380. That is small enough that your local market may have a dozen posts in total; mobility will matter more to your earnings than seniority does.
This work suits people who like variety in the fault rather than variety in the setting, and who would rather fix than build.
How long it takes to become one of the 5,380 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
$37,670 to $58,430 — 1.6x, or $1,730 a month between the quarters. An unremarkable spread, which means the useful planning number for Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners is the bottom of it rather than the middle.
The 25th percentile is $37,670 — $18.11 an hour, and $12,350 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 being on call, or being the person who arrives after something has already gone wrong, would wear on you.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 5,380 people employed as Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners; 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
At 1.6x between $37,670 and $58,430 this is a normally shaped occupation. $46,420 is what the middle of Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners earns after the years it takes to get there, which is not the same as what it offers you now.
Put in money rather than ratios: $37,670 at the 25th percentile, $46,420 at the midpoint, $58,430 at the 75th. $20,760 separates the quarter of Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $58,430, the 75th percentile, is worth $12,010 a year more than the $46,420 midpoint and $20,760 more than the $37,670 a quarter of Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners settle for.
$12,010 separates $46,420 from the $58,430 top quarter, while only $8,750 separates it from $37,670. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $18.11 at the bottom quarter, $22.31 at the midpoint, $28.09 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
The $46,420 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 $46,420 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners, 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