Dredge Operators Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($42,060) to the 90th ($75,050). BLS suppresses cells that fail its reliability rules (n/p here) and caps the highest wages at $239,200+ a year or $115.00+ an hour; in this ladder that top code appears at the very top rows only.

Employment and concentration

With 1,030 jobs nationally, Dredge Operators make up 0.00% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: Alabama alone holds 110 of those jobs, the top three states hold 26.2%, and the deepest concentration sits in Alabama (location quotient 7.53, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

One in ten workers in this field earns $42,060 or less, and one in ten earns $75,050 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 1.8 to 1 and the annual gap is $32,990. The mean ($55,820) versus median ($48,430) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

New Jersey posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $70,400, and Alabama the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Dredge Operators stands number 820 by employment and number 563 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 7% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.0% of the group's 13,645,590 jobs. In 6 of the 9 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $48,430, 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

There is no metro table on this page because BLS did not publish one: Dredge Operators fails the survey's metro reliability rules in May 2024, which happens to occupations that are small, dispersed, or both. The 9-state table above is as local as the federal data honestly goes for this job.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $48,430 works out to $4,036 a month before taxes, $1,863 per biweekly paycheck, and $931 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($46,120) to the 75th ($60,300) is worth $14,180 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 $53,273 would sit between the median ($48,430) and the 75th percentile ($60,300), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $46,120, is $2,310 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: Commercial Pilots, Motor Vehicle Operators, All Other, Machine Feeders and Offbearers, Railroad Conductors and Yardmasters, Crane and Tower Operators, Captains, Mates, and Pilots of Water Vessels. The full directory is on the Careers hub.