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
$38,210
Median hourly
$18.37
Typical range
$28,600 to $76,460
Tips and chair rent shape real earnings, and many barbers are independent operators.
Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS 2025. 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, at a glance
These at-a-glance figures are estimates derived from the national median and a state wage index, shown to give a rough sense of local differences. Pick any state (here or in the selector above) to look up its real figures.
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.
Start a Men's Hair Replacement and Hair System Business
Serve the fast-growing men's hair system market with fittings, installs, and maintenance for hairline units and toupees, a niche with a fraction of the competition of the women's hair industry.
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.
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.