$40/hour is not bad. Aside from the few thousand tenured orchestra/chorus musicians, none of them are going to be making 6 figures from one job, but a number of musician-musician households pull in over $100k between two incomes built around relatively unstable gig work without either one having a high-prestige job.

Also note that churches, which are a hub for working-class musicians, are exempt from BLS reporting.

$40/hour is $83,000 per year, that is more then livable in the US, and by definition of the median half make more. So I can't agree that it's not a living wage for most.

Assuming they work 40 hours a week. Do they?

Maybe I’m just off the mark but this doesn’t seem like the kind of job you clock in at 9 and stay till 5.

I would expect much more hours when performing and less when not. I would expect it indeed would be approximately a fulltime job.

it's nowhere close. Most orchestras are playing 1-2 nights a week (max) and each performance has 0 or 1 rehearsal (1 if it's a new program, 0 otherwise). Average when performing is maybe 20hr a week