Paperhangers

$52,140 against a $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — $2,120 apart. Paperhangers pays what the average job pays, so the decision has to be made on the work, the entry cost and the spread rather than on the wage.

National employment of 1,570 makes Paperhangers a rare job rather than an uncommon one. Expect to move for the first post and to move again for the second, because waiting for a local vacancy can mean waiting years.

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.

No verified preparation time is on file for Paperhangers. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.

The quarters sit at $44,890 and $60,180, $1,274 a month apart at a ratio of 1.3x. Narrow enough that what you can expect is close to what everyone else gets.

At $44,890 — $21.58 an hour — the 25th percentile of this field sits essentially at the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint. Being in the bottom quarter of Paperhangers still means being paid like the average American worker.

Avoid it if you have an existing back, knee or shoulder injury, or if intermittent layoffs between projects would be unmanageable.

There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 1,570 people employed as Paperhangers; 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.

At 1.3x between $44,890 and $60,180, this is a narrow distribution. $52,140 is a reliable number to plan around, which is worth something — but so is knowing that outperforming the field will not be paid for.

Put in money rather than ratios: $44,890 at the 25th percentile, $52,140 at the midpoint, $60,180 at the 75th. $15,290 separates the quarter of Paperhangers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.

Between $44,890 and $60,180 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $52,140. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $8,040; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $15,290.

$52,140 sits almost exactly in the middle of its own range — $7,250 above the bottom quarter, $8,040 below the top one. A symmetric distribution like this is the case where the median genuinely does describe the typical person.

Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $25.06 at the midpoint for Paperhangers, $21.58 at the 25th percentile and $28.93 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.