Working in Climbing: Passion Still Doesn’t Pay the Rent

Climbing Business Journal has published the second edition of its survey on pay in U.S. climbing gyms. Job satisfaction is up almost across the board, but the data points to an industry that is becoming more professional without fixing some of its biggest blind spots. An analysis.

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3.47 out of 5. That’s the average job-satisfaction score reported by assistant routesetters—the people who design and set the boulder problems climbers come in to try every night. No other non-management position scored lower. Assistant coaches came in just behind them, at 3.56. In other words, the two jobs most directly responsible for creating what a climbing gym sells are also held by some of its least satisfied employees.

The figure comes from a dashboard published August 27, 2026, by Climbing Business Journal, the U.S. trade publication that has covered the climbing-gym business for more than a decade. This is the second edition of a survey launched in 2024, and it arrives at a pivotal moment. A year earlier, gym operators surveyed by the same publication were already describing a tougher business environment, squeezed between rising costs and declining customer spending. At the same time, workers have been finding new ways to increase their leverage by unionizing gym after gym.

One caveat: this is not a global snapshot. The 1,590 responses collected across two survey rounds—the latest ran from April 1 through May 31, 2026—came from 38 countries but were overwhelmingly North American. The publication makes no attempt to hide that limitation: its averages reflect “the survey, not the industry.” Still, the survey does something the climbing business has long lacked. Jobs that were once understood mostly through personal experience and conversations between coworkers can now be compared across 34 positions with actual numbers attached.

Happier, Really?

The first finding is almost counterintuitive: job satisfaction is rising. Of the 30 positions included in both editions of the survey, satisfaction increased in 26, regardless of gym size or employee tenure.

Pay explains some of that change. Average compensation, adjusted for local cost of living, rose 27 percent in the U.S. South and 21 percent in the West. Benefits moved in the same direction—but not for everyone. Among full-time employees, the share receiving health insurance or retirement benefits increased for nearly every position. Among part-time workers, it fell for every single one.

Workers stretched too thin, expected to juggle several roles, underpaid for the responsibilities they carry, and unable to keep up with the rising cost of living in their cities

Climbing Business Journal offers another, less flattering explanation. Research has shown that reported job satisfaction can rise during periods of economic uncertainty, as opportunities to leave become harder to find and the stability of having a job becomes more valuable—“especially in a passion-driven industry,” the publication notes. In other words, a worker who no longer feels free to quit may report being more satisfied without actually being treated any better.

One of the survey’s most important additions this year is that respondents reported the number of hours they actually work. Nearly one in four U.S. full-time employees works more than 40 hours a week at their primary gym alone.

By broader U.S. standards, that figure may not sound especially high. Gallup estimates that roughly half of full-time American workers put in more than 40 hours a week. But the climbing-gym figure leaves out shifts at other gyms, coaching or teaching on the side, and second jobs outside the industry. The real workload is therefore likely higher in a business where holding multiple jobs is common.

The survey’s open-ended responses fill in the rest of the picture, and the same complaints show up again and again: workers stretched too thin, expected to juggle several roles, underpaid for the responsibilities they carry, and unable to keep up with the rising cost of living in their cities. More than the raw number of hours, those day-to-day conditions fuel burnout. And they hit hardest in jobs that cannot simply be put on hold: the routesetter responsible for keeping the climbing fresh and the coach responsible for keeping members engaged.

A Gap That Won’t Close

The obvious antidote is paid time off. In the United States, that usually falls under the acronym PTO, for “paid time off,” a bucket that can include vacation, holidays, and sick leave in a country where federal law guarantees none of them. The survey average is 116 hours a year, or just under three weeks. But the distribution tells a more revealing story: 74 percent of part-time employees and 9 percent of full-time employees receive no PTO at all. Among people working more than 40 hours a week, nearly half receive less than the survey average.

Administrative and management positions continue to receive the most paid time off. In practice, paid rest is tied more closely to seniority and responsibility than to how physically or mentally demanding a job is.

After adjusting for cost of living, women’s average annual salaries remain 11 percent lower than men’s, while nonbinary workers earn 23 percent less

Another finding from 2024 remains firmly in place two years later: pay varies by gender. After adjusting for cost of living, women’s average annual salaries remain 11 percent lower than men’s, while nonbinary workers earn 23 percent less. The gap actually widens with experience. Among respondents with at least 11 years in the industry and the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree, it reaches 29 percent. Across both survey rounds, men earned more in 64 percent of the positions measured.

The climbing industry still performs better than the United States as a whole. According to data compiled by USAFacts, women nationally earn 82 cents for every dollar earned by men, compared with 89 cents in climbing gyms. A smaller gap is still a gap.

When Pay Becomes Leverage

These numbers are not appearing in a quiet industry. For months, employees at U.S. climbing gyms have been organizing, with pay and working conditions at the center of a labor fight that Vertige Media has followed from the beginning—from the wave of gym unionization to campaigns organized under the Climbing Workers United banner, which has connected efforts from one facility to another.

In some places, the dispute has become openly confrontational, including a boycott campaign against Movement Gyms, one of the country’s largest climbing-gym chains. Aaron Vanek, a prominent figure in the organizing effort, previously explained the forces behind that campaign in our pages. Seen in that context, the raises documented by Climbing Business Journal stop looking like a simple statistical trend. They become part of an ongoing negotiation in which both sides need data.

There is an important warning, however, before trying to apply these numbers to France. The U.S. data cannot simply be read through a French lens. Five weeks of legally guaranteed paid vacation, health insurance that is not tied to your employer, and a collective bargaining framework fundamentally change the equation. But the survey does expose a gap by comparison. France’s climbing-gym market has grown dramatically, yet to our knowledge, no public survey tracks what the thousands of people working in those gyms earn or how long they stay in their jobs.

By 2026, though, that story is getting harder to sustain. The climbing industry increasingly looks like any other business sector: one shaped by growth, professionalization, bankruptcies, consolidation, and finance

Climbing has always been full of people willing to earn less in exchange for staying close to something they love. That model helped build the industry, and it remains one of its biggest blind spots. When working in climbing is presented as a perk in itself, asking for more can quickly be treated as a sign of ingratitude.

By 2026, though, that story is getting harder to sustain. The climbing industry increasingly looks like any other business sector: one shaped by growth, professionalization, bankruptcies, consolidation, and finance. It is a world where some gym owners can build real wealth. It is also a world where it is becoming harder to convince a younger generation that working 40 hours a week should be its own reward because the job happens to involve climbing. And it is becoming harder to pretend labor law somehow matters less here.

That is exactly where numbers become useful.

The assistant routesetter who rated their job satisfaction at 3.47 out of 5 did not need this report to tell them they were tired. But the report gives that fatigue context: a salary range for the job, a benchmark for hours worked, and a way to compare their situation with everyone else’s.

No statistic has ever signed a union contract, and none of these numbers will close a pay gap on their own. But once an industry starts measuring itself, workers and employers have something concrete to negotiate over. Climbing gyms have long known how to count visits, memberships, and revenue. Now they are beginning to measure the people who keep the whole operation running.

For better or worse?

Read the full Climbing Business Journal report here.