Every Job in a Body Shop, and What Each One Pays

Short answer: the person turning the wrench is not the highest earner in the building, and the gap is not small. Four roles out-earn them.

By Anthony Braswell for Quorum Industries LLC, The Autobody Directory · Updated 2026-08-18 · How this was written, and what the machine may not do

How this page was produced: Researched, drafted and checked with AI assistance under human direction, and signed off by the named author. How this site is written

• A cost estimator's median is $68,320. A body repairer's is $55,920. The estimator is ahead by $12,400, and there are 16,870 of them in body shops.
• The refinish painter edges the technician, $57,020 to $55,920, with a higher ceiling too.
• Four roles out-earn the body technician before you get anywhere near an owner: managers, insurance appraisers, shop supervisors and estimators.
• Body repairers are 38 percent of the people in these roles. The trade is not mostly technicians.

The whole payroll, by median pay

Every occupation the federal wage survey publishes inside NAICS 811120, automotive body, paint, interior and glass repair. Occupation and industry are both held explicit, so these are the people in a collision shop rather than everyone with the same job title anywhere.

Generated from the register that backs this page rather than typed. Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 national industry file.

The estimator gap is the one worth sitting with

16,870 cost estimators work in body shops, and they out-earn the 97,770 body repairers by $12,400 at the median. They are the fourth-largest occupation in the industry.

That is a real statement about what the industry pays for. Writing the sheet is compensated better than executing it, and by a margin that would take a technician years to close. Whether that is right is an argument worth having; that it is true is not.

Separately, insurance appraisers working inside body shops have a median of $73,130, higher than any role except general management. BLS does not release their headcount in this industry, so treat that as a small population, but the number is published.

The painter, and the occupation code that no longer exists

Here is something almost nobody writing about this trade has noticed.

There is no federal occupation code for the automotive refinish technician. SOC 51-9122, "Painters, Transportation Equipment", was retired. O*NET redirects the old code and says so plainly:

"The occupation code you requested, 51-9122.00 (Painters, Transportation Equipment), is no longer in use. In the future, please use 51-9124.00 (Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders) instead."

The successor is a broad manufacturing occupation covering people who coat "glassware, cloth, ceramics, metal, plastic, paper, or wood". Its definition does explicitly say it "Includes painters of transportation vehicles such as painters in auto body repair facilities", and its sample job titles include "Automotive Refinish Technician". But nationally that code is dominated by factory coating operators, not refinish techs.

So a national figure for 51-9124 is not painter pay and must never be quoted as it. The only honest way to get it is to cross the occupation with the industry: 51-9124 inside NAICS 811120. That is what the table above does, and it gives 25,440 people at a $57,020 median, the second-largest occupation in a collision shop.

Two consequences:

The painter out-earns the body technician, $57,020 against $55,920, and by more at the top: a 90th percentile of $96,110 against the technician's $91,280. Refinish is the better-paid half of the trade at every point in the distribution we can see.

Anyone quoting "auto painter" pay from a retired code is quoting nothing, and anyone quoting the live code without the industry cross is quoting furniture finishers.

What the shop floor looks like from the bottom

The three lowest-paid roles are the ones that make a shop function and rarely get written about: janitors and cleaners at $35,820, helpers at $37,220, and cleaners of vehicles and equipment at $37,860, of whom there are 12,340. Vehicle cleaners outnumber parts staff four to one.

At the other end, first-line supervisors of mechanics have a 90th percentile of $119,050, the widest ladder in the building: their 10th percentile is $45,740, so the same job title spans nearly $75,000 depending on where you are and what you run.

Why "the technician shortage" is a partial description

Add the roster up and body repairers are 38 percent of the people in these occupations. Estimators, painters, glass installers, parts, office staff, detailers, supervisors and managers are the rest.

A shop that cannot hire is often not short of technicians specifically. It may be short of an estimator, and estimators are compensated as the scarcer role. The phrase "technician shortage" names one occupation and describes a staffing problem that runs across at least eight.

Our workforce page covers what BLS projects for the body-repairer occupation on its own, and the replacement-versus-growth distinction that most coverage gets backwards.

What these numbers are not

Not your shop. These are national medians for an industry of 35,000 establishments averaging about seven employees each. A large MSO location and a two-bay independent are both in here.

Not total compensation. Wages only. Flat-rate structures, commission, bonuses tied to cycle time or CSI, tool allowances and benefits are all outside this data, and in this trade several of those are material.

Not the self-employed. The survey asks establishments about employees. Owner-operators are absent.

Not adjusted for anything. No cost of living, no hours, no experience. A median is the middle of everyone currently doing the job.

Not the same as our state tables. Those cover three occupations across 51 jurisdictions. This one covers eighteen occupations in one industry, nationally. See what auto repair pays in every state for the geography.

What we could not verify

• Headcount for insurance appraisers in body shops. BLS withheld it. The wage figures are published; the employment figure is not, so we make no claim about how many there are.
• Whether estimators here are shop-side or insurer-side. The occupation code is the same for both. A cost estimator employed by a body shop is writing the sheet, but the code cannot prove that every one of the 16,870 is.
• How much of the painter figure is genuinely refinish. The industry cross is the best available filter and it is not perfect: a coating operator doing something else inside a body-shop business would still count.
• Service advisers. There is no clean code for the role. Customer service representatives and counter clerks both appear above and neither is exactly it.
• Ownership income. Not in this data at any point.

Sources

• BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, national industry-specific file, downloaded through a browser on 18 August 2026 after an automated request was refused under BLS policy. Occupations crossed with NAICS 811120. US federal public domain. Parsed by tools/pull_oews_industry.py, rendered by tools/build-shop-roster.js.
• O*NET OnLine, occupation 51-9124, read 18 August 2026, for the retirement of 51-9122, the successor definition and the sample job titles.
• The dealer-versus-independent comparison for the same occupations is in dealer or independent.

• What auto repair pays in every state
• Dealer or independent: what the pay data shows
• What a collision technician is paid in every state
• What the government count says about the collision workforce

General consumer information: not legal, insurance, or financial advice. Requirements, coverage, and practices vary by state, policy, and manufacturer.

Where this fits

Each link says what it is for. We add one only when a reader on this page has a real reason to need that page next.

• Dealer or Independent: The Federal Data Answers It, and the Answer Flips by Trade (the same occupations split by employer instead of by role)
• Paid For a Time the Database Set (how flat rate decides the pay behind those job titles, and what two courts held about it)