BLS OEWS May 2025 · SOC 39-5011
How much do barbers make?
The federal wage record for barbers, straight from the May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics release.
- Median pay$38,210a year
- Median hourly$18.37an hour
- Mean pay$47,070a year
- Employed15,000nationally
This is the smallest occupation on this site by headcount, and the reason is the survey rather than the trade: most barbers rent a chair or own the shop, and OEWS counts neither. Read the 15,000 as employed barbers on a payroll, not as the size of barbering.
What barbers earn, from the bottom tenth to the top
A single median hides the range, and in this trade the range is the useful part. These four figures are the published percentiles for occupation code 39-5011, not a calculation done here.
| Measure | Annual | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 10th percentile | $28,600 | the bottom tenth earn less than this |
| Median | $38,210 | half earn more, half earn less |
| Mean | $47,070 | the average, pulled up by the top |
| 90th percentile | $76,460 | the top tenth earn more than this |
Hourly equivalents: $18.37 median, $22.63 mean
Where barbers are paid most, and where there are most of them
Five highest paying states
| State | Mean annual |
|---|---|
| Oregon | $83,650 |
| Washington | $67,540 |
| Colorado | $59,140 |
| Missouri | $55,900 |
| Illinois | $55,540 |
Five largest employing states
| State | Employed |
|---|---|
| Texas | 2,580 |
| California | 1,390 |
| Florida | 1,240 |
| Washington | 1,220 |
| Missouri | 580 |
The two lists rarely overlap, and that is the point of showing both. A high mean wage usually tracks cost of living, while a high headcount tracks population. Neither on its own tells you where the work is.
SOC 39-5011 · 1 August 2026
What these figures actually say about barbers
This is the clearest example on the site of a federal wage record measuring a survey rather than a trade.
Fifteen thousand employed barbers nationally is not a small trade, it is a small payroll. The Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey reaches wage and salary workers through their employers, and barbering is organised around chair rental and shop ownership, both of which put a working barber outside the survey. The Census count of barber shops on the sister page to this one finds many times more nonemployer barber businesses than shops with staff, which is the same fact seen from the other side.
The spread is the useful part of this record rather than the median. The top tenth earn well over twice what the bottom tenth earn, which is a wide range for an occupation with a single licence and no formal grades. Some of that is geography and some of it is the difference between a chair in a shop with a waiting list and a chair in a shop without one, and the survey cannot separate the two.
The state tables underline how thin the employed layer is. The largest employing state accounts for a substantial share of every employed barber counted in the country, and the five largest together account for close to half. That is not where barbering happens. It is where barbering happens on somebody payroll, which in most of the country it does not.
A barber marketing to clients is marketing as a self employed person whether or not the federal data can see them. The chair is the business, the local tag is the distribution, and a consistent feed of honest before and after pairs is the closest thing to a shop window that a rented chair has.
Every figure quoted above appears in the tables on this page or is arithmetic on them. Nothing here forecasts, values a business or suggests a price, because none of the three is measurable from a wage survey.
Where these numbers came from
Public domain US federal statistics, fetched by hand and baked into this site rather than called at build time. If you quote a figure from this page, cite the agency rather than this site, and use the wording below.
US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, national cross industry estimates, occupation 39-5011 Barbers. Accessed 2026-08-01.
National, cross-industry estimates for wage and salary workers. Self-employed workers, owner-operators and chair or booth renters are not in scope.
bls.gov/oes and the published series files at download.bls.gov
How many of these businesses there are
Marketing the trade
All the numbers
Common questions
- How much do barbers make?
- The median wage for barbers in the United States is $38,210 a year, or $18.37 an hour. The mean is $47,070. The bottom tenth earn under $28,600 and the top tenth earn over $76,460. Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, occupation code 39-5011.
- Does this include self-employed workers?
- No, and that matters more in this trade than the number does. OEWS covers wage and salary workers only. Self-employed workers, owner-operators, chair renters and single-van businesses are outside the survey entirely, so this is what an employed person in this job is paid, not what everyone doing this work earns.
- Which state pays the most?
- Oregon, at a mean of $83,650 a year, followed by Washington at $67,540. The five highest paying and five largest employing states are listed above, and a high mean usually reflects cost of living as much as opportunity.
- What does this actually tell a barber running their own business?
- This is the clearest example on the site of a federal wage record measuring a survey rather than a trade. A barber marketing to clients is marketing as a self employed person whether or not the federal data can see them. The chair is the business, the local tag is the distribution, and a consistent feed of honest before and after pairs is the closest thing to a shop window that a rented chair has.
- How current is this figure?
- It is the May 2025 release, which is the most recent Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data published by BLS. It was fetched and baked into this site on 1 August 2026. This page makes no live API call, so what you see is what was checked on that date.
Numbers persuade nobody. The pair does.
Every trade on this page sells the same way: a photograph of the problem beside a photograph of the result. Take the two, and Before and After Video Maker turns them into a 1080p video, a looping GIF or a still.