Salaries / Cosmetologist / Hairstylist
Personal Care & Service · SOC 39-5012
Cosmetologist / Hairstylist salary
Hairdressers, hairstylists, and cosmetologists cut, color, and style hair and provide other beauty services. A state license is required.
Median annual
$35,000
Median hourly
$16.80
Typical range
$24,000 to $63,000
Tips and booth rent shape take-home pay a lot, and many stylists run as independent contractors.
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 cosmetologist / hairstylist 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 Nail Technician or Open a Nail Business
Get licensed as a nail tech, then build it your way: a booth rental, a mobile service that goes to clients, or your own salon down the road.
Start a Freelance Makeup Artist Business
Build a paying MUA book around weddings, events, photoshoots, and lessons, with a professional kit, airtight hygiene, and a portfolio that books itself.
Build an Editorial and Celebrity Makeup Career
Work your way into the editorial, entertainment, and celebrity makeup world through assisting, test shoots, and agency representation, treating the climb itself like a business.
You could hire cosmetologist / hairstylists, 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.