Airfield Operations Specialists Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Airfield Operations Specialists offer sit among all 16,640 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 16,640, or 0.01% of the U.S. total. Florida leads the state table with 3,670 jobs; the top three states sum to 40.0% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Alaska posts a location quotient of 4.72, 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: $75,830 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($111,030) is 3.2 times the 10th percentile ($35,200), a gap of $75,830 a year. The mean of $67,120 sitting above the median of $56,750 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Washington posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $82,540, and Florida the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Airfield Operations Specialists stands number 591 by employment and number 454 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 8% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.1% of the group's 13,645,590 jobs. In 18 of the 37 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $56,750, 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

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 1,770 jobs, 10.6% 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, New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $50,310 a year, against $67,060 in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA. 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 annual wage of $56,750 works out to $4,729 a month before taxes, $2,183 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,091 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($41,220) to the 75th ($78,320) is worth $37,100 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $62,425 would sit between the median ($56,750) and the 75th percentile ($78,320), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $41,220, is $15,530 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: Rail Yard Engineers, Dinkey Operators, and Hostlers, Bridge and Lock Tenders, Hoist and Winch Operators, Motorboat Operators, Rail Transportation Workers, All Other, Dredge Operators. The full directory is on the Careers hub.