Occupation / job
Plasterers and Stucco Masons
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 $57,660 midpoint puts Plasterers and Stucco Masons $7,640 above the $50,020 typical American job — a 15% premium paid for the training, the licence or the conditions. It is not free money and it disappears the moment you stop meeting the requirement.
Nationally 19,310 people do this. That is a real occupation with a thin local presence — enough that Plasterers and Stucco Masons is a career, not enough that you can assume a second employer down the road.
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.
How long it takes to become one of the 19,310 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 of Plasterers and Stucco Masons earn under $47,970 and a quarter over $71,310 — 1.5x, or $23,340 apart. Narrow spreads usually mean a pay schedule, which is stability bought at the price of upside.
The bottom quarter of Plasterers and Stucco Masons earns under $47,970, which is within $2,050 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 19,310 figure counts people already working as Plasterers and Stucco Masons, 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
Top quarter to bottom quarter is 1.5x. In a band that narrow, $57,660 is a genuinely representative number for Plasterers and Stucco Masons and the main variable left is where you live.
In cash terms the middle half of Plasterers and Stucco Masons runs $47,970 to $71,310 — $23,340 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $57,660.
Between $47,970 and $71,310 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $57,660. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $13,650; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $23,340.
$13,650 separates $57,660 from the $71,310 top quarter, while only $9,690 separates it from $47,970. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Plasterers and Stucco Masons has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Plasterers and Stucco Masons is $27.72 an hour. The quarters sit at $23.06 and $34.28, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $57,660 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.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Plasterers and Stucco Masons, the hourly figure is $57,660 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else