Salary
Average Salary: $53,880
Expected Lifetime Earnings: $2,249,000
There's not a ton of money in editing, but you can live quasi-comfortably—around $50,000-$55,000 a year on average (source). Of course, opportunities are there to move up the ranks and make more at big publications or publishing houses, but you'll have to edit your little buns off to get there.
Buns in the process of being edited off.
Some editors–those working at major national newspapers or magazines, or for hugely successful book publishers—can actually make around $100,000, but don’t count on it (source). What's more likely is that you'll struggle to find a position where you can manage to scrape together at least $30,000. And no matter how talented an editor you are, editing those numbers on your paychecks won't do much good. Those banks are pretty tough to fool.