Do recruiters make good money? Above the typical job, with a wide spread

Short answer: yes, by the standard of the typical American job, and with a wide spread around that answer. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts recruiters inside the occupation "human resources specialists", and its May 2025 median for that occupation is $75,940 a year, against $50,980 for all workers. Half of recruiters earn more than that median and half less; the lowest-paid 10% earn under $47,180 and the highest-paid 10% over $128,720, so the top of the occupation earns about 2.7 times the bottom. Where a recruiter sits in that range depends mostly on the industry that employs them, on whether they are on an employer's payroll or an agency's, and on how far they climb toward management, where the median more or less doubles. The sections below give the figures, the comparisons that make "good money" a real question rather than a feeling, and what the answer means if you run a hiring team.

What recruiters earn: the May 2025 figures

The median works out to $36.51 an hour. The occupation covers the people who "recruit, screen, and interview job applicants and place newly hired workers in jobs", about 939,700 of them in 2025, and the typical entry-level education is a bachelor's degree. Two features of the survey matter for reading the table. The wages it measures are straight-time gross pay and already include "incentive pay, including commissions" and production bonuses, so an agency recruiter's commission is inside these numbers, not on top of them. And it excludes overtime pay, nonproduction bonuses such as a year-end company bonus, and the self-employed, so an independent recruiter who runs their own desk has no federal benchmark at all.

Is that good money? Three comparisons

Against the typical job. The recruiter median is about 49% above the all-worker median. A recruiter at the 10th percentile, the bottom of the occupation, still earns close to what the median American worker earns. By that yardstick recruiting is comfortably a middle-income to upper-middle-income job.

Against the careers next to it. The same handbook lists the occupations it considers similar, with their May 2025 medians:

Among the bachelor's-degree specialist roles, recruiting sits in the middle: a little under compensation and benefits specialists, a little over public relations and training specialists, well under labor relations. The step that changes the answer is the one up to management. A human resources manager's median is $149,280, almost twice the recruiter median, which is why "do recruiters make good money" has a different answer at year two and at year twelve.

Against the people they recruit. In healthcare the comparison recruiters notice most is with the clinicians they hire. The May 2025 median for registered nurses is $97,550, with the lowest 10% above $68,940 and the highest 10% above $137,470. A hospital recruiter typically earns less than the nurses they place, and the gap is wider still in the healthcare industry's own recruiter pay, below.

Where recruiters earn the most: pay by industry

The industry a recruiter works in moves the median by more than $23,000. Government and professional services pay the most. Healthcare and social assistance, the industry a hospital's in-house recruiters belong to, pays a median of $64,130, about $11,800 under the all-industry figure, and about $33,000 under the nurses in the comparison above. The lowest row is employment services, the staffing and recruiting agency industry, at $60,550. Because the survey's wages already include commission, that row is not a base salary waiting for commission to be added; it is what the typical agency recruiter took home including it. Agency pay is a lower typical wage with a wider spread, where the high earners are the recruiters who place the most or the highest-paid people. How that commission is calculated is in do recruiters get commission, and the per-placement arithmetic in how much do recruiters make per hire.

What separates a $47,000 recruiter from a $128,000 one

• Seniority and the move to management. The occupation's own range runs to $128,720 at the 90th percentile, and the management title above it carries a median of $149,280. The surest route to the top of the range is the one that leads out of the occupation and into running the function.
• Industry. A recruiter in government or professional services earns a median roughly $20,000 above one in healthcare or staffing, for comparable work.
• Payroll or agency. An in-house recruiter is salaried and paid every period regardless of hires. An agency recruiter's income rises and falls with placements and with the pay of the people placed, which produces the lower median and the wider spread in the staffing row. The models are set out in how do recruiters make money.
• Hours. Most specialists work full time during regular business hours and some work more than 40 hours a week; the survey's wages exclude overtime pay, so the figures here understate the earnings of anyone paid for extra hours.

Is it a good career beyond the paycheck?

The handbook projects employment of human resources specialists to grow 6% from 2025 to 2035, faster than the average for all occupations, adding about 60,100 jobs to the 939,700 counted in 2025. The entry requirement is a bachelor's degree rather than a professional license or a graduate degree, and the pay ladder above the role is steep. Against that, the industry that employs the most people in the United States, healthcare, pays its recruiters less than the national median and far less than the clinicians they hire, and the staffing industry pays the least of all. Recruiting is good money for a bachelor's-degree job; it is not, by the federal figures, a path to the pay of the nurses, therapists and physicians a healthcare recruiter spends the day talking to. For the career view of the role, see the salary guide for recruiters.

What this means if you run a healthcare talent acquisition team

For a hiring leader the question behind "do recruiters make good money" is a budget question in disguise. A salaried hospital recruiter costs about the healthcare median above, a fixed figure that does not rise with the number of hires. The constraint on that team is capacity: how many requisitions each recruiter can source, contact and close, when the candidates worth hiring are mostly not applying. Agencies are paid, per placement or per hour on assignment, to absorb that work. Betterleap exists to let the salaried team do it instead. The agent searches 35M+ healthcare professionals, checks licensure through 25+ state board partnerships, drafts a personalized outreach sequence, sends it from the recruiter's own mailbox and follows up until the candidate replies, then re-engages the past applicants and silver medalists already in your ATS (25+ integrations). Community Health Network reported a 35% increase in sourcing efficiency and about ten hours a week saved per recruiter; FOX Rehabilitation sources 20% of its new hires through Betterleap and saw a 60% email open rate against 10% with its CRM. None of it carries a per-placement fee. To see what your team could source on its own requisitions, request a demo, and for the sourcing playbook itself, read how to source passive nurse candidates.

Sources

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Human Resources Specialists, May 2025 wages (including the industry and similar-occupations tables and the all-workers median) and 2025-35 projections, read 20 October 2026.
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Registered Nurses, May 2025 wages, read 20 October 2026.
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 technical notes (what the survey's wages include and who is excluded), read 20 October 2026.
• Betterleap: betterleap.com, case studies for Community Health Network and FOX Rehabilitation.