Occupation / job
Painters, Construction and Maintenance
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 $49,400 median against $50,020 across all occupations puts Painters, Construction and Maintenance within $51 a month of the exact middle of the American labour market. Nothing in the headline number argues either way.
National employment is 225,190. At that scale hiring is continuous, the market rate is well established, and your leverage comes from being credibly willing to go somewhere else.
The building trades suit people who want to be paid to learn a craft rather than pay to learn a subject, and who can plan around work that stops when the project or the weather does.
We carry no verified training length for Painters, Construction and Maintenance — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
The middle half runs $44,640 to $61,660 — $1,418 a month between the quarters, a 1.4x ratio. Spreads this narrow are usually set by a grade or a scale, so the negotiation you are imagining probably is not available.
The bottom quarter of Painters, Construction and Maintenance earns under $44,640, which is within $5,380 of the $50,020 typical American job. An occupation whose 25th percentile is level with the national middle has an unusually forgiving downside.
Avoid it if the cumulative physical wear is not something you have thought about honestly at the age you would be finishing.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 225,190 figure counts people already working as Painters, Construction and Maintenance, 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
$44,640 to $61,660 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.
The middle half of this field earns between $44,640 and $61,660. That is $17,020 of range, with $49,400 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Between $44,640 and $61,660 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $49,400. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $12,260; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $17,020.
The upper half of the middle range — $49,400 to $61,660, or $12,260 — is far longer than the lower half at $4,760. In a shape like this an average would flatter Painters, Construction and Maintenance considerably, and would describe nobody.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $21.46 at the bottom quarter, $23.75 at the midpoint, $29.64 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 $49,400 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.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $49,400 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