Captains, Mates, and Pilots of Water Vessels Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Captains, Mates, and Pilots of Water Vessels worker at that point in the distribution, so $124,530 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 35,390 Captains, Mates, and Pilots of Water Vessels jobs in May 2024, which is 0.02% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Louisiana, where the location quotient is 14.38, meaning the occupation holds 14.38 times its national share of local jobs. Louisiana employs the most people outright, 6,310 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 41.7% of the national total.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $117,970 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($164,230) is 3.6 times the 10th percentile ($46,260), a gap of $117,970 a year. The mean of $97,660 sitting above the median of $85,540 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 38 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is Mississippi at $112,670; the jobs leader is Louisiana:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Captains, Mates, and Pilots of Water Vessels stands number 454 by employment and number 180 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 64% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.3% of the group's 13,645,590 jobs. In 11 of the 38 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $85,540, 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

Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX is the largest metro employer with 2,850 jobs, 8.1% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $70,730 a year, against $125,100 in Baton Rouge, LA. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $85,540 a year is $7,128 a month gross, $3,290 every two weeks, $1,645 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($60,800) to the 75th ($124,530) is worth $63,730 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 $7,128 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 $94,094 would sit between the median ($85,540) and the 75th percentile ($124,530), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $60,800, is $24,740 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

Sibling occupations in Transportation and Material Moving Occupations: Traffic Technicians, Gas Compressor and Gas Pumping Station Operators, Rail Yard Engineers, Dinkey Operators, and Hostlers, Bridge and Lock Tenders, Hoist and Winch Operators, Motorboat Operators. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.