How Much Do Mechanics Make?

Posted by Curtis Published in Statistics

Y’all know I do some auto work, right? Well, I started wonderin’ if I was really making the money I ought to make. So I went to this website that tells all about different jobs: http://www.bls.gov/oco/

I looked up mechanics, and here’s what it said:

Median hourly earnings of automotive service technicians and mechanics, including commission, were $15.60 in May 2004. The middle 50 percent earned between $11.31 and $20.75 per hour. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $8.70, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $26.22 per hour. Median annual earnings in the industries employing the largest numbers of service technicians in May 2004 were as follows:

Local government…..$38,160
Automobile dealers…..38,060
Automotive repair and maintenance…..28,810
Gasoline stations…..28,030
Automotive parts, accessories, and tire stores…..27,180

Well, the first thing I see is that mechanics make like $10,000 bucks more working for auto dealers! Man, I gotta look into that!

But then, I started seeing that everything said “median.” What’s that mean? Why’re they using “median”? Do they mean average? I’m going to look it up… see what it means and see if I can figure out why they use that. Gimme a holler in a comment if you have any ideas!