Painters use rollers and brushes to apply paint efficiently.
Residential painters apply paint, varnish, stains and other finishes to interior and exterior surfaces. If necessary, they also strip old, flaking paint, clean the surfaces and apply a sealant or primer before beginning a new paint job. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that painters nationwide earned an average salary of $37,610 as of May 2010. The number of jobs for painters is expected to increase by seven percent between 2011 and 2018, due largely to the inability of the industry to automate.
Average Wages
As of May 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), painters earned an average of $37,610 annually, or $18.08 per hour. Salaries were $22,450 or less in the bottom 10th percentile and $58,480 or more in the best-paid 10th percentile.
Average Wages by Locality
The BLS reports that, as of May 2010, painters earned the most in Illinois, with an average annual salary of $51,140. In Nevada, painters averaged $49,720 per year, and in Hawaii, $49,350. The mean wage in the District of Columbia was $47,980, and it was $46,620 in New York.
Lowest-Paying States
Painters earned the least in South Carolina, where the average annual salary was $29,140, according to the May 2010 report issued by the BLS. Slightly better than this state was Mississippi, where they earned an average of $29,350, and New Mexico, where they averaged $29,660. In North Carolina, residential painters earned a mean annual salary of $30,200; in North Dakota, they averaged $30,800.
Highest-Paying Metropolitan Areas
Salaries for residential painters varied a great deal by location, according to the May 2010 report from the BLS. The two best-paying metropolitan areas were in Illinois: the Kankakee-Bradley area, where the average salary was $74,990, and the greater Champaign-Urbana area, where painters averaged $62,070. In the Fairbanks, Alaska, metropolitan area, the mean annual salary was $60,130. Painters in the greater Nassau-Suffolk, New York, area averaged $55,360 annually, and in the Newark-Union metropolitan district of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the average salary was $53,550.
Nonmetropolitan Areas
Painters in nonmetropolitan or rural areas earned lower average salaries than painters in large cities, according to the May 2010 salary data released by the BLS. The highest average salary, $47,790, was in the Mother Lode region of California. In the rural areas of southern Ohio, the average salary was $47,230. On Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island in Massachusetts, the mean salary was $47,130, scarcely more than the $47,100 averaged by painters in West Central Illinois. In the Railbelt-Southwest district of Alaska, painters earned an average annual salary of $46,580.
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