What Service Side Hustles Pay: 8 Benchmarks From the Latest BLS Wage Data

Side-hustle income posts usually start with marketplace anecdotes. We started somewhere less exciting and more useful: the latest national wage table from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The archived May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics release, published May 15, 2026, gives a consistent employee benchmark for hundreds of occupations. Across the eight service-oriented jobs below, the national median runs from $17.00 an hour for animal caretakers to $44.54 for web developers. The underlying rows are also available in our downloadable wage-benchmark dataset.

We use the median rather than the mean because it marks the midpoint: half of employee jobs in the occupation pay more, and half pay less. Employment counts are included to show the size of each employee market, not the number of freelance openings.

Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2025, Table 1. Values are national cross-industry estimates for wage and salary employees. The table was checked July 11, 2026.

A freelance quote and an employee wage answer different questions. An employee may be paid for meetings, admin time, and slow periods. A freelancer usually has to recover those hours—as well as software, equipment, insurance, payment fees, and unpaid client acquisition—from fewer billable hours.

That makes the BLS median a useful comparison point, not an automatic freelance rate. If a side project pays $30 per delivery hour but requires another hour of pitching, revisions, and invoicing, the relevant rate is $15 per total hour before expenses.

Suppose a designer wants their paid work to cover the $30.27 employee median, pays a 10% platform fee, and expects only 70% of working time to be billable. Before any other expense, the modeled quote is:

$30.27 ÷ (1 − 0.10) ÷ 0.70 = $48.05 per billable hour

The 10% fee and 70% billable share are assumptions, not BLS statistics. Change them to match the contract. Add required expenses separately. Most importantly, test whether actual clients will pay the result. Our hourly-rate calculatorlets you replace both assumptions with your own costs and paid time.

1. We used Table 1 of the archived May 2025 national OEWS release, the latest national release available when checked on July 11, 2026.
2. We selected eight detailed occupations with a reasonably close match to service side hustles already covered by MOYUXB. We did not relabel a broad occupation as a perfect match for a freelance niche.
3. We transcribed employment, median hourly wage, and mean hourly wage from the official table. No survey, marketplace scrape, or income estimate was added.
4. The rate example is MOYUXB arithmetic with its assumptions stated next to the result; it is not a BLS estimate.

This process follows the site-wide claim and evidence rules described on our methodology page.

• Self-employed people are excluded. The BLS OEWS FAQ explicitly says the survey does not cover them.
• National medians hide geography. Local employee wages and local customer budgets can differ sharply from the U.S. figure.
• Occupation matches are approximate. An animal caretaker employed by a shelter is not economically identical to an independent pet sitter; a staff writer is not the same as a freelance copywriter.
• Wages are not total compensation. BLS says OEWS does not include employer benefit costs, while a freelancer must fund their own benefits and business overhead.
• The estimates combine multiple survey panels. The May 2025 survey methods explain the model-based process and three-year panel design.

• BLS: Occupational Employment and Wages — May 2025 (archived release)
• BLS: OEWS program overview
• BLS: OEWS frequently asked questions
• BLS: May 2025 OEWS survey methods

Data reference period: May 2025. National release date: May 15, 2026. Source check completed: July 11, 2026. This article provides general research context, not an earnings forecast or pricing instruction.