Occupation / job
Writers and Authors
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
Writers and Authors pays $76,910 at the midpoint, 54% above the $50,020 national figure. Premiums that size are rationed by something; find out what before the salary does your thinking for you.
Employment stands at 47,940. Writers and Authors is common enough to be recruited for continuously and specific enough that the experience travels — the combination that makes changing employer a working pay rise.
Media and communication work suits people who can write or edit to a deadline that will not move, for an audience that owes them no attention.
No verified preparation time is on file for Writers and Authors. 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
A quarter of the field earns under $58,230 and a quarter over $101,950: $43,720 between them, a ratio of 1.8x. Wide enough that the first offer you get tells you more about your prospects than the median does.
Even the bottom quarter of Writers and Authors earns $58,230 — $27.99 an hour and $8,210 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Very little of this distribution is badly paid.
Avoid it if you need a stable employer; this is one of the most restructured parts of the labour market.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 47,940 figure counts people already working as Writers and Authors, 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
From $58,230 to $101,950 at a ratio of 1.8x is wide enough that two people with the same job title have materially different jobs. $76,910 sits in the middle of that and describes neither of them especially well.
The middle half of this field earns between $58,230 and $101,950. That is $43,720 of range, with $76,910 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Getting to $101,950, the 75th percentile, is worth $25,040 a year more than the $76,910 midpoint and $43,720 more than the $58,230 a quarter of Writers and Authors settle for.
The climb from $76,910 to $101,950 is $25,040; the drop to $58,230 is $18,680. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Writers and Authors and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Writers and Authors is $36.97 an hour. The quarters sit at $27.99 and $49.01, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Writers and Authors. The self-employed are excluded, so $76,910 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Writers and Authors, the hourly figure is $76,910 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