Bus Drivers, Transit and Intercity Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Bus Drivers, Transit and Intercity worker at that point in the distribution, so $69,090 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 148,980 Bus Drivers, Transit and Intercity jobs in May 2024, which is 0.10% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Hawaii, where the location quotient is 3.56, meaning the occupation holds 3.56 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 23,500 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 33.3% of the national total.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $44,390 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($82,640) is 2.2 times the 10th percentile ($38,250), a gap of $44,390 a year. The mean of $58,390 sitting above the median of $57,440 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts California first at 23,500 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, New York would lead at $82,420. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Bus Drivers, Transit and Intercity stands number 207 by employment and number 449 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 10% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.1% of the group's 13,645,590 jobs. In 11 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $57,440, 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 19,130 jobs, 12.8% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 170 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $41,950 a year, against $77,240 in Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $57,440 a year is $4,787 a month gross, $2,209 every two weeks, $1,105 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($46,050) to the 75th ($69,090) is worth $23,040 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $4,787 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $63,184 would sit between the median ($57,440) and the 75th percentile ($69,090), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $46,050, is $11,390 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

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Cleaners of Vehicles and Equipment, Shuttle Drivers and Chauffeurs, Refuse and Recyclable Material Collectors, Parking Attendants, Flight Attendants, Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.