Occupation / job
Recreation Workers
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 median of $36,560 against the $50,020 all-occupation figure leaves Recreation Workers 27% behind — $13,460 across a year. Whether that is workable depends almost entirely on where you would be doing it.
331,490 people work as Recreation Workers — large enough that the occupation is always hiring somewhere and always losing people somewhere else. Constant demand is security; it is rarely leverage.
These personal care roles suit people who are good with strangers quickly and repeatedly, since the same interpersonal skill has to be produced fresh for every client all day.
How long it takes to become one of the 331,490 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
The middle half runs $31,780 to $43,470 — $974 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 Recreation Workers earns under $31,780 — $18,240 below the $50,020 national midpoint, or $15.27 an hour. A floor that low means the occupation cannot be judged on its median alone; a quarter of the people in it are somewhere else entirely.
Avoid it if you need a schedule that does not follow other people’s evenings, weekends and school terms.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 331,490 figure counts people already working as Recreation Workers, 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
The quarters are $31,780 and $43,470, a ratio of 1.4x. In a distribution this narrow, the biggest single lever on your pay in Recreation Workers is the cost of living where you do it.
Put in money rather than ratios: $31,780 at the 25th percentile, $36,560 at the midpoint, $43,470 at the 75th. $11,690 separates the quarter of Recreation Workers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Between $31,780 and $43,470 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $36,560. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $6,910; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $11,690.
$6,910 separates $36,560 from the $43,470 top quarter, while only $4,780 separates it from $31,780. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Recreation Workers has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $17.57 at the midpoint for Recreation Workers, $15.27 at the 25th percentile and $20.89 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Recreation Workers for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $36,560 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Recreation Workers, the hourly figure is $36,560 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