Costume Attendants Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($33,610) to the 90th ($115,240). BLS suppresses cells that fail its reliability rules (n/p here) and caps the highest wages at $239,200+ a year or $115.00+ an hour; in this ladder that top code appears at the very top rows only.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 6,290 Costume Attendants jobs in May 2024, which is 0.00% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Nevada, where the location quotient is 6.04, meaning the occupation holds 6.04 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 1,740 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 52.6% of the national total.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $115,240, which is 3.4 times the $33,610 at the 10th, a difference of $81,630 annually. Because the mean wage ($65,890) sits above the median ($54,810), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts California first at 1,740 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, California would lead at $80,440. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Costume Attendants stands number 735 by employment and number 472 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 47% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.2% of the group's 3,159,920 jobs. In 8 of the 30 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $54,810, 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

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA is the largest metro employer with 1,290 jobs, 20.5% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 34 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $80,280 a year, against $96,420 in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $4,568 a month before tax, $2,108 biweekly, $1,054 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($39,240) to the 75th ($83,090) is worth $43,850 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $60,291 would sit between the median ($54,810) and the 75th percentile ($83,090), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $39,240, is $15,570 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

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Manicurists and Pedicurists, 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. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.