Salaries / Barber
Personal Care & Service · SOC 39-5011
Barber salary
Barbers cut and style hair and shave and trim beards, usually in barbershops. A state license is required.
Median annual
$36,000
Median hourly
$17.30
Typical range
$23,000 to $67,000
Tips and chair rent shape real earnings, and many barbers are independent operators.
Source: National estimate (to be replaced by live BLS data). Figures are gross pay and vary by location, employer, and experience.
The pay range, visually.
Low end (about the 10th percentile), median, and high end (about the 90th percentile).
By state
State figures are estimates derived from the national median and a state wage index, shown to give a rough sense of local differences.
Your skills are a business
Ideas we have for people in personal care & service.
The same experience that earns a paycheck as a barber can start a business. Here are real ideas from our marketplace that fit this field.
Open a Salon or Barbershop
Run a salon, barbershop, or beauty suite where you earn from your own chair plus booth rent or commissions from other stylists.
Become a Men's Grooming Coach
Teach men the grooming and hygiene routines nobody ever taught them (skin, hair, beard, scent, presentation) through coaching sessions, routine building, and workshops.
Start a Men's Grooming Products Store
Curate and sell men's grooming products (skin, hair, beard, shave, scent) in one honest store that tells men what to use without the beauty-aisle confusion.
Become a Social Media Manager for Local Shops
Run the online presence for cafes, boutiques, barbershops, and restaurants: one monthly content day in the shop, a month of posts, and the reviews handled.
You could hire barbers, not just be one.
We have a staffing calculator to price the work and a full course on how to start a staffing agency, so you can turn a field you already know into a business that puts other people to work.