Air Traffic Controllers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

A percentile marks a point in this occupation's pay distribution: the worker one quarter of the way up the Air Traffic Controllers ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $101,150. BLS top-codes very high wages ($239,200+ a year, $115.00+ an hour) and marks estimates it cannot publish as n/p.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 22,400, or 0.01% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 2,260 jobs; the top three states sum to 27.9% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Alaska posts a location quotient of 10.77, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $134,320 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($210,410) is 2.8 times the 10th percentile ($76,090), a gap of $134,320 a year. The mean of $142,740 sitting near the median of $144,580 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Virginia posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $185,890, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Air Traffic Controllers stands number 537 by employment and number 36 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Transportation and Material Moving Occupations, the group median wage is $52,310 across 50 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 176% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.2% of the group's 13,645,590 jobs. In 15 of the 45 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $144,580, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV is the largest metro employer with 1,690 jobs, 7.5% of the national total. Employment rank and pay rank are different lists: the second table re-sorts metros with at least 500 jobs in this occupation by mean pay, the floor keeping a handful of workers from posing as a market.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $137,910 a year, against $172,250 in Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX. That is the metro effect in one line: identical job title, materially different pay, decided mostly by which labor market the job sits in.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median Air Traffic Controllers paycheck, gross, is $5,561 every two weeks on an annual $144,580, which is $12,048 a month and $2,780 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($101,150) to the 75th ($186,510) is worth $85,360 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Gross is a starting point, not a budget: the paycheck calculator nets it down by state, an offer comparison lives in the salary calculator, and the raise vs inflation calculator separates a real raise from a nominal one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $159,038 would sit between the median ($144,580) and the 75th percentile ($186,510), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $101,150, is $43,430 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Transportation and Material Moving Occupations

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Gas Compressor and Gas Pumping Station Operators, Rail Yard Engineers, Dinkey Operators, and Hostlers, Bridge and Lock Tenders, Hoist and Winch Operators, Motorboat Operators, Rail Transportation Workers, All Other. The full directory is on the Careers hub.