Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media: pay for 41 occupations, May 2025

In short

• Highest median pay in this field: Art Directors, $114,850 a year.
• Lowest: Floral Designers, $37,360 a year.
• Most jobs: Public Relations Specialists (283,380), Coaches and Scouts (248,950) and Graphic Designers (197,830).
• For comparison, the median for all occupations in the country was $50,980 a year.

Sorted by median pay, highest first. "Not published" in the yearly or hourly column means BLS releases only the other one for that occupation.

The field as a whole

Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media holds 2,046,290 of the 155,495,730 jobs in the national figures, about 1 in every 100. Its median pay of $62,750 a year is 23% above the median for all occupations ($50,980), which places it number 8 of the 22 fields. Across the whole field, the lowest-paid tenth earned less than $34,700 and the highest-paid tenth more than $134,900; the middle half earned between $44,720 and $94,530. The average was $79,790, 27% above the median.

Inside the field

Inside the field, the best-paid occupation with a published yearly median earns 3.1 times the lowest ($114,850 against $37,360). 29 of the 36 occupations with a yearly median are above the national median of $50,980, and 7 are below it. The occupation in the middle of the field's list is Lighting Technicians, at $68,060. Jobs are unevenly spread: the three largest occupations hold 36% of the field's jobs, while the smallest, Choreographers, has 2,860. Pay stretches furthest within Athletes and Sports Competitors, where the highest-paid tenth earn over $742,310 and the lowest-paid tenth under $26,500.

Reading the field

Pay also moves with place. For the field's largest occupation, Public Relations Specialists, the state medians run from $44,950 in Puerto Rico to $102,740 in District of Columbia; its own page has every state. The Bureau of Labor Statistics sorts every occupation into one field by the work done, not by the industry of the employer, so an accountant at a hospital is counted under business and financial operations, not health care.

Questions about this field

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Checked in November 2026. Figures are for employees, before tax, and leave out overtime pay and benefits. They are official statistics, not advice or a pay offer; see bls.gov/oes for the original tables.

All fields