At what USCF rating are you considered a professional chess player?

It may only be a matter of opinion.

You need to define "professional."  The best one is:

Chess professional--one who cannot make a living playing chess.

That can be done at any rating.

yea, too vague. 

Proficient

2200 ? 

Making Money. I could be a professional chess player, if kids paid this patzer for lessons, I guess.

I consider 2300s to be semi-professional level, and 2400+ to be at least that.  If you are in the 2300s and active in tournament chess you are probably not just playing solely for fun.

proficient?  i would say 1800s is a darn solid player.  uscf, that is.  but really decent?  yea, 2100-2200 is the low end of the 'decent' bunch. 

Real professionals (who can make a living only by playing chess) need 2600+. Or perhaps even 2700+ these days.

It used to be that 1500-1600 ish was the rating of the average player, if you were higher than that you were better than half the rated players.

However, in the specific case of USCF ratings, they did a few things with ratings for kids (giving them extremely low start ratings, e.g. 400) that have messed a bit with the system; see e.g. this article and the comments: http://www.eddins.net/steve/chess/2008/06/06/131

this true, but some players who are IMs and even GMs but only have 2400-2500 make living soley through playing chess as well as other chess related activities, teaching, organizing tournaments etc.

2000 is experts level I think. maybe 2200 is master or candidate master. I'd say once you get to 2200-2300, you knows you stuff and can probably beat 90-95% of the population.

I tend to think of 2200 as the approximate dividing line between "plays as a hobby" and "I've put in serious effort"

I believe that for USCF rated players, expert is the line that separates the amateur category from the professional category.  A tournament director should be able to  answer this definitively.  So that starts at 2000.  BTW, experts are in the top 3.6% percentile which means they can beat 96.4% of other rated chess players.  That means they can beat approximately 99.99999% of the world's population.   

Try 99% of competitive players. 

It is a matter of income...there are 2400 players like Jeremy Silman who are great writers and coaches who make a good living, and there are 2400 players who live in their cars. 

"... Though being a chess pro might sound romantic (it certainly did to me when I was young), the romance quickly melts away when you realize that you’re broke, starving, and living in a hovel. Iif you live in America, then you can forgot about health insurance … way, way too expensive. Other than the top 10 or 20 grandmasters, most of the rest will never make a lot of money. As a result, grandmasters usually have to teach chess and write chess books. It wasn’t what they wanted to do when they started out, but when reality hits you in the face, you have to bow to it.

Of course, being a grandmaster and teaching students and writing books isn’t that bad. But you would make far more money and have much more security if you went to university and got a great career. And don’t forget that very few people ever become international masters and grandmasters. Keep in mind that there are 600 million to 800 million chess players in the world and only 1522 grandmasters.

It's not all bad news!

Mr. BeekeeperBob, let’s discuss this in a positive light. I’ve known many very low-rated chess teachers who are absolutely excellent. Teaching is a skill, and even if you’re rated 1500, you might be just what the doctor ordered for children or beginners of any age. …"

https://www.chess.com/article/view/can-anyone-be-an-im-or-gm