Occupation / job
Producers and Directors
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
$90,360 against a $50,020 national midpoint is 81% more, or $19.39 an hour. Almost nothing pays this much more without a long, expensive or restricted route in — read that route before reading the number again.
143,120 people are employed as Producers and Directors. At that size there is a real ladder and enough churn that experience can be sold to a competitor rather than only accumulated where you are.
Performing and sport suit people who can separate the quality of the work from its reception, because the two come apart constantly and the money tracks the second one.
We carry no verified training length for Producers and Directors — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
At 2.2x, from $62,670 to $134,800, the two halves of Producers and Directors are not really doing the same job. $6,010 a month separates them, and something other than the title explains it.
Even the bottom quarter of Producers and Directors earns $62,670 — $30.12 an hour and $12,650 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Very little of this distribution is badly paid.
Avoid it if you need income stability in your twenties, or cannot personally fund the years before the work is paid properly.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 143,120 figure counts people already working as Producers and Directors, 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
A 2.2x ratio says the label covers materially different work. Somewhere between $62,670 and $134,800, employer type, sub-speciality or credential is doing the sorting that the job title is not.
The middle half of this field earns between $62,670 and $134,800. That is $72,130 of range, with $90,360 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
The 75th percentile is $134,800. Reaching it from the $90,360 midpoint is $44,440 a year; reaching it from the $62,670 that the bottom quarter of Producers and Directors earn is $72,130.
It is $27,690 from $90,360 down to $62,670 but $44,440 up to $134,800. When a range leans this far upward, the interesting question is what puts someone in the top half, because the money is disproportionately there.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Producers and Directors is $43.44 an hour. The quarters sit at $30.12 and $64.80, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $90,360 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 $90,360 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Producers and Directors, 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