Occupation / job
Tree Trimmers and Pruners
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
Tree Trimmers and Pruners pays $50,960 at the midpoint against $50,020 across all occupations. The headline argues neither for nor against it; the case has to be made on the spread, the entry cost and what the day is actually like.
55,160 people are employed as Tree Trimmers and Pruners. At that scale every large metro has a real market, and the difference between a good year and a bad one is usually which employer you are at rather than whether anyone is hiring.
Grounds work suits people who would rather be outdoors in bad weather than indoors under a light, and who can sustain physical effort over years rather than a season.
We carry no verified training length for Tree Trimmers and Pruners — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
Between $44,840 and $63,900 there is $19,060, a ratio of 1.4x. Tight distributions are predictable, and predictable cuts both ways: little risk of being badly underpaid, little prospect of doing much better.
At $44,840 — $21.55 an hour — the 25th percentile of this field sits essentially at the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint. Being in the bottom quarter of Tree Trimmers and Pruners still means being paid like the average American worker.
Avoid it if you cannot sustain physical work outdoors in bad weather for years rather than a season.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 55,160 people employed as Tree Trimmers and Pruners; 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.
What the spread tells you
Top quarter to bottom quarter is 1.4x. In a band that narrow, $50,960 is a genuinely representative number for Tree Trimmers and Pruners and the main variable left is where you live.
Put in money rather than ratios: $44,840 at the 25th percentile, $50,960 at the midpoint, $63,900 at the 75th. $19,060 separates the quarter of Tree Trimmers and Pruners at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $63,900, the 75th percentile, is worth $12,940 a year more than the $50,960 midpoint and $19,060 more than the $44,840 a quarter of Tree Trimmers and Pruners settle for.
From $50,960 the drop to $44,840 is $6,120 and the climb to $63,900 is $12,940. When the upper half of the range is that much longer, the average is pulled well above the median — which is exactly why this site publishes the median.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $21.55 at the bottom quarter, $24.50 at the midpoint, $30.72 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
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Tree Trimmers and Pruners for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $50,960 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Tree Trimmers and Pruners, the hourly figure is $50,960 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