Derrick Operators, Oil and Gas Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Derrick Operators, Oil and Gas worker at that point in the distribution, so $72,820 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 11,040 Derrick Operators, Oil and Gas jobs in May 2024, which is 0.01% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in North Dakota, where the location quotient is 23.92, meaning the occupation holds 23.92 times its national share of local jobs. Texas employs the most people outright, 4,840 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 67.2% of the national total.

One in ten workers in this field earns $42,930 or less, and one in ten earns $84,620 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.0 to 1 and the annual gap is $41,690. The mean ($62,490) versus median ($62,740) comparison shows an unusually symmetric ladder in this occupation.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 17 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is Louisiana at $84,410; the jobs leader is Texas:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Derrick Operators, Oil and Gas stands number 674 by employment and number 363 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Construction and Extraction Occupations, the group median wage is $54,660 across 60 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 15% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.2% of the group's 6,361,730 jobs. In 5 of the 16 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $62,740, 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 1,560 jobs, 14.1% 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, Midland, TX posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $58,340 a year, against $68,160 in Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, 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 annual wage of $62,740 works out to $5,228 a month before taxes, $2,413 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,207 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($49,440) to the 75th ($72,820) is worth $23,380 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 $69,014 would sit between the median ($62,740) and the 75th percentile ($72,820), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $49,440, is $13,300 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Construction and Extraction Occupations

Sibling occupations in Construction and Extraction Occupations: Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters, Painters, Construction and Maintenance, Cement Masons and Concrete Finishers, Highway Maintenance Workers, Construction and Building Inspectors. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.