Fine Artists, Including Painters, Sculptors, and Illustrators Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Fine Artists, Including Painters, Sculptors, and Illustrators worker at that point in the distribution, so $89,630 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 10,000 Fine Artists, Including Painters, Sculptors, and Illustrators jobs in May 2024, which is 0.01% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Washington, where the location quotient is 3.67, meaning the occupation holds 3.67 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 1,760 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 38.6% of the national total.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $114,240 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($140,660) is 5.3 times the 10th percentile ($26,420), a gap of $114,240 a year. The mean of $76,450 sitting above the median of $60,560 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

California posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $140,080, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Fine Artists, Including Painters, Sculptors, and Illustrators stands number 686 by employment and number 399 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations, the group median wage is $66,220 across 36 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 9% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.5% of the group's 1,989,300 jobs. In 14 of the 38 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $60,560, 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 1,360 jobs, 13.6% 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, Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $87,770 a year, against $165,010 in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA. 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

Budget arithmetic on the median: $5,047 a month before tax, $2,329 biweekly, $1,165 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($39,740) to the 75th ($89,630) is worth $49,890 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 $66,616 would sit between the median ($60,560) and the 75th percentile ($89,630), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $39,740, is $20,820 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Broadcast Technicians, Fashion Designers, Umpires, Referees, and Other Sports Officials, Athletes and Sports Competitors, Sound Engineering Technicians, Media and Communication Equipment Workers, All Other. The full directory is on the Careers hub.