Occupation / job
Training and Development Specialists
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
Training and Development Specialists pays $69,280 at the midpoint, 39% above the $50,020 national figure. Premiums that size are rationed by something; find out what before the salary does your thinking for you.
458,300 people do this work. An occupation this large has a published, well-known going rate — which means less scope to be underpaid and less scope to negotiate above it.
Business operations work suits people who make a process legible to everyone who touches it — the deliverable is usually a decision someone else can now make quickly.
No verified preparation time is on file for Training and Development Specialists. 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.
Who should not do this
$44,940 separates the bottom quarter of Training and Development Specialists at $50,110 from the top quarter at $95,050. At a 1.9x ratio the midpoint is a weak guide to your own first year — find out which end you would be entering at.
The 25th percentile is $50,110, $90 above the $50,020 typical American job. A floor above the national midpoint is rare, and it is worth more than an equivalent amount of upside.
Avoid it if being responsible for an outcome you cannot directly control would frustrate you.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 458,300 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
From $50,110 to $95,050 at a ratio of 1.9x is wide enough that two people with the same job title have materially different jobs. $69,280 sits in the middle of that and describes neither of them especially well.
In cash terms the middle half of Training and Development Specialists runs $50,110 to $95,050 — $44,940 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $69,280.
Between $50,110 and $95,050 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $69,280. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $25,770; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $44,940.
The climb from $69,280 to $95,050 is $25,770; the drop to $50,110 is $19,170. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Training and Development Specialists and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $24.09 at the bottom quarter, $33.30 at the midpoint, $45.69 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
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Training and Development Specialists. The self-employed are excluded, so $69,280 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
The hourly number on this page is $69,280 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Training and Development Specialists, 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