The most common hair color in the world is black. Do you know who would know that? Hairstylists. With the majority of people coloring their hair nowadays, hair stylists are in more demand than ever.
It takes roughly three years to grow your hair out to your shoulders. And seven years to reach your waist. At that rate, we're guessing you've visited a hair stylist a few times during that period. A lot of hairstylists work in small businesses or even own their own shop. Some find work as teachers at a beauty school.
As you shampoo, cut and dye hair, you may be wondering about the hours. Generally, if you work at a small business, you probably will get to make your own hours. You'll get to work whenever it's convenient for you. It doesn't get any better than that.
How to Become a Hair Stylist
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a hair stylist. For example, did you know that they make an average of $17.98 an hour? That's $37,399 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 8% and produce 63,900 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does a Hair Stylist Do
There are certain skills that many hair stylists have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed creativity, customer-service skills and listening skills.
How To Become a Hair Stylist
If you're interested in becoming a hair stylist, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 15.3% of hair stylists have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 4.5% of hair stylists have master's degrees. Even though some hair stylists have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a hair stylist. When we researched the most common majors for a hair stylist, we found that they most commonly earn high school diploma degrees or associate degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on hair stylist resumes include diploma degrees or bachelor's degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a hair stylist. In fact, many hair stylist jobs require experience in a role such as cashier. Meanwhile, many hair stylists also have previous career experience in roles such as sales associate or customer service representative.
Hair Stylist Career Paths
As you move along in your career, you may start taking on more responsibilities or notice that you've taken on a leadership role. Using our career map, a hair stylist can determine their career goals through the career progression. For example, they could start out with a role such as certified nursing assistant, progress to a title such as team leader and then eventually end up with the title branch manager.
Average Salary for a Hair Stylist
What Am I Worth?
Top Skills For a Hair Stylist
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 40.9% of hair stylists listed cosmetology on their resume, but soft skills such as creativity and customer-service skills are important as well.
Choose From 10+ Customizable Hair Stylist Resume templates
Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Hair Stylist templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Hair Stylist resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.
Hair Stylist Demographics
Hair Stylist Gender Distribution
After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
- Among hair stylists, 90.8% of them are women, while 9.2% are men.
- The most common race/ethnicity among hair stylists is White, which makes up 64.1% of all hair stylists.
- The most common foreign language among hair stylists is Spanish at 69.3%.
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Best States For a Hair Stylist
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a hair stylist. The best states for people in this position are Washington, Montana, California, and Colorado. Hair stylists make the most in Washington with an average salary of $50,507. Whereas in Montana and California, they would average $48,188 and $47,954, respectively. While hair stylists would only make an average of $47,376 in Colorado, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. West Virginia
$44,810
Avg. Salary
2. Michigan
$40,446
Avg. Salary
3. Colorado
$47,376
Avg. Salary
How Do Hair Stylist Rate Their Jobs?
Top Hair Stylist Employers
Most Common Employers For Hair Stylist
| Rank  | Company  | Average Salary  | Hourly Rate  | Job Openings  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | JCPenney | $61,569 | $29.60 | 938 |
| 2 | American Girl | $60,418 | $29.05 | 84 |
| 3 | Homes.com | $48,842 | $23.48 | 31 |
| 4 | Ulta Beauty | $46,836 | $22.52 | 285 |
| 5 | Regis | $46,656 | $22.43 | 995 |
| 6 | Salon & Spa | $41,619 | $20.01 | 35 |
| 7 | Cutting Edge Capital | $41,619 | $20.01 | 35 |
| 8 | Best Cuts Inc | $41,618 | $20.01 | 63 |
| 9 | Hair | $41,538 | $19.97 | 409 |
| 10 | Floyd's 99 Barbershop | $41,473 | $19.94 | 26 |
Hair Stylist Videos
Becoming a Hair Stylist FAQs
How long does it take to become a Hair Stylist?
It takes 3 years of professional experience to become a hair stylist. That is the time it takes to learn specific hair stylist skills, but does not account for time spent in formal education.