Barbers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

A percentile marks a point in this occupation's pay distribution: the worker one quarter of the way up the Barbers ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $32,050. BLS top-codes very high wages ($239,200+ a year, $115.00+ an hour) and marks estimates it cannot publish as n/p.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 18,100, or 0.01% of the U.S. total. Texas leads the state table with 3,920 jobs; the top three states sum to 40.2% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Texas posts a location quotient of 2.41, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

One in ten workers in this field earns $27,770 or less, and one in ten earns $78,440 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.8 to 1 and the annual gap is $50,670. The mean ($47,800) versus median ($38,960) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 36 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is District of Columbia at $102,360; the jobs leader is Texas:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Barbers stands number 579 by employment and number 718 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Personal Care and Service Occupations, the group median wage is $37,320 across 32 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 4% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.6% of the group's 3,159,920 jobs. In 17 of the 36 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $38,960, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 2,000 jobs, 11.0% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $44,380 a year, against $55,110 in Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $38,960 a year is $3,247 a month gross, $1,498 every two weeks, $749 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($32,050) to the 75th ($59,180) is worth $27,130 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $3,247 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $42,856 would sit between the median ($38,960) and the 75th percentile ($59,180), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $32,050, is $6,910 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Personal Care and Service Occupations

Sibling occupations in Personal Care and Service Occupations: Ushers, Lobby Attendants, and Ticket Takers, First-Line Supervisors of Personal Service Workers, First-Line Supervisors of Entertainment and Recreation Workers, Except Gambling Services, Gambling Dealers, Residential Advisors, Skincare Specialists. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.