AI training listings advertise hourly rates as high as $400 for civil rights attorneys, while lower listed ceilings for other specialists illustrate a wide spread in pay offers across the field.
The figures apply to particular openings. Listings for condensed-matter specialists reach $170 an hour, and software engineering roles list rates up to $120 an hour.
The reported October 2026 average for Mercor was $110 per hour. Assignments range from turning material into text and tagging objects in images to assessing AI answers in law and medicine. Some workers also develop scoring rubrics to help train models and evaluate their responses.
One data contractor with years of experience moved from transcription and photo labeling into more complex assignments, while still searching across platforms for open projects. In another case, a radiologist took on data work alongside medical work and earned in one hour an amount comparable to the first contractor’s weekly pay.
The examples span routine data handling and work that draws on professional knowledge. The listings and individual accounts do not establish how common specialist assignments are or how consistently contractors can obtain paid hours.
