It takes Calvin Harris just under three hours to earn your annual income, study says

A new annual study has measured the length of time it takes for the top 30 grossing musicians to earn average annual salaries for several different blue collar/white collar jobs. Included in that list is Calvin Harris ($48M) and The Chainsmokers ($45.5M), who were also named Forbes‘ top two “highest-paid DJs in 2018.”

Using data from Forbes and Billboard for the musicians, MIDINation measured the top 30 grossing musicians across six genres against the following jobs: Minimum wage workers, Truck drivers, Construction workers, Musicians, Registered nurses, and Software developers.

For Calvin Harris, it takes only two hours and forty-five minutes to make an annual minimum wage income ($15,080/yr). He also makes an average software developer’s annual salary in just shy of nineteen hours ($103,560/yr). For The Chainsmokers, they need only work 13 hours to make an RN’s entire year’s earnings

And the two electronic dance acts aren’t even in the top 10 grossing musicians of 2018. Imagine how disparate those figures would be for top-earning artists like U2 ($118M) and Coldplay ($115.5M), which, to be fair, is split between multiple band members. But for individual acts like Ed Sheeran ($110M), Bruno Mars ($100M), and Katy Perry ($83M), the numbers are sobering in terms of economic disparity.

Even among the Hollywood elite artist class, there’s an obvious gender wage gap that comports with the national statistic that women make 80 cents to the male dollar. Just look at Taylor Swift’s $80 million up against the guy she basically took to the top, Ed Sheeran. Or Beyoncé’s cool $60 million in contrast to her her husband Jay-Z’s earnings ($75.6M)

More than anything, the MIDINation research report puts wealth distribution into perspective. Read their full analysis here.