---
title: "Climbing Gym Manager"
description: "Runs an indoor climbing or bouldering gym, managing staff, safety, route setting, programs, and the member experience."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/climbing-gym-manager"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Climbing Gym Manager

**Category:** Personal Care and Service · **SOC code:** 39-1014 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 39-1014.00

Runs an indoor climbing or bouldering gym, managing staff, safety, route setting, programs, and the member experience.

Also advertised as: Climbing Gym General Manager; Climbing Facility Manager; Head Route Setter; Climbing Program Manager; Bouldering Gym Manager.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $48,560 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $23.34/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $34,760 to $79,060, with the middle half between $39,400 and $62,320
- **Total US employment:** 103,190
- **Typical entry education:** High school
- **Preparation required:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +5.3% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 10,600 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 52/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 103,190 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $34,760 |
| 25th | $39,400 |
| 50th (median) | $48,560 |
| 75th | $62,320 |
| 90th | $79,060 |
| Mean (average) | $53,550 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| WA | $62,900 | $58,778 | 2,010 |
| DC | $62,090 | $56,496 | 290 |
| DE | $59,790 | $59,905 | 390 |
| ME | $59,050 | $60,845 | 320 |
| CO | $58,640 | $56,903 | 4,150 |
| MA | $56,990 | $53,888 | 2,700 |
| HI | $55,700 | $50,659 | 720 |
| AK | $54,530 | $53,273 | 490 |
| CT | $53,980 | $52,099 | 1,820 |
| CA | $53,620 | $48,428 | 13,620 |
| WY | $53,580 | $57,805 | 200 |
| NH | $52,580 | $50,478 | 750 |
| NJ | $52,360 | $48,123 | 3,530 |
| VT | $51,510 | $52,584 | 310 |
| NY | $51,320 | $47,553 | 3,250 |

38 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 53 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/climbing-gym-manager/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/climbing-gym-manager.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 109,300 in the 2025–2035 base year to 115,100 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 5,800 jobs, or +5.3%. Faster than average: 5.3% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 10,600 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** High school diploma or equivalent (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** Less than 5 years.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

## What the work involves

- Hire, train, and schedule gym staff and instructors
- Inspect walls, ropes, auto-belays, and flooring for safety
- Plan route setting schedules and climbing variety
- Develop youth teams, classes, and community events
- Track memberships, retail sales, and budgets
- Handle incidents and keep safety records
- Respond to member feedback and build community

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Speaking — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Management of Personnel Resources — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Personnel and Human Resources — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administrative — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Clarity — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Recognition — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Enterprising (E), Social (S), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| E — Enterprising | 7.00 |
| S — Social | 5.00 |
| C — Conventional | 4.72 |
| R — Realistic | 3.77 |
| A — Artistic | 1.79 |
| I — Investigative | 1.03 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ESFJ | 87.8 |
| ESTJ | 77.4 |
| ESFP | 71.5 |
| ENFJ | 69.1 |
| ISFJ | 63.0 |

Best-fitting types: ESFJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [First-Line Supervisor of Entertainment and Recreation Workers, Except Gambling Services](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-entertainment-and-recreation-workers) — median $48,560
- [First-Line Supervisor of Personal Service Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-personal-service-workers) — median $48,590
- [First-Line Supervisor of Office and Administrative Support Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-office-and-administrative-support-workers) — median $69,500
- [First-Line Supervisor of Mechanics, Installers, and Repairers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-mechanics-installers-and-repairers) — median $79,860
- [First-Line Supervisor of Non-Retail Sales Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-non-retail-sales-workers) — median $87,520
- [First-Line Supervisor of Housekeeping and Janitorial Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-housekeeping-and-janitorial-workers) — median $49,100
- [First-Line Supervisor of Passenger Attendants](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-passenger-attendants) — median $62,840
- [First-Line Supervisor of Food Preparation and Serving Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-food-preparation-and-serving-workers) — median $44,080
- [First-Line Supervisor of Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-farming-fishing-and-forestry-workers) — median $59,320
- [First-Line Supervisor of Production and Operating Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-production-and-operating-workers) — median $74,450

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/climbing-gym-manager