Hazardous Materials Removal Workers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Hazardous Materials Removal Workers offer sit among all 50,570 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

With 50,570 jobs nationally, Hazardous Materials Removal Workers make up 0.03% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 7,950 of those jobs, the top three states hold 29.4%, and the deepest concentration sits in New Mexico (location quotient 3.35, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $45,150 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($82,480) is 2.2 times the 10th percentile ($37,330), a gap of $45,150 a year. The mean of $55,740 sitting above the median of $48,490 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

The state spread for Hazardous Materials Removal Workers runs from the $65,080 median in Tennessee down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (7,950 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Hazardous Materials Removal Workers stands number 386 by employment and number 560 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 11% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.8% of the group's 6,361,730 jobs. In 25 of the 50 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $48,490, 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 3,580 jobs, 7.1% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 139 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, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $40,740 a year, against $85,940 in Kennewick-Richland, 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

The median Hazardous Materials Removal Workers paycheck, gross, is $1,865 every two weeks on an annual $48,490, which is $4,041 a month and $932 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($42,710) to the 75th ($62,150) is worth $19,440 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Gross is a starting point, not a budget: the paycheck calculator nets it down by state, an offer comparison lives in the salary calculator, and the raise vs inflation calculator separates a real raise from a nominal one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $53,339 would sit between the median ($48,490) and the 75th percentile ($62,150), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $42,710, is $5,780 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

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Paving, Surfacing, and Tamping Equipment Operators, Roustabouts, Oil and Gas, Service Unit Operators, Oil and Gas, Helpers--Pipelayers, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters, Tile and Stone Setters, Insulation Workers, Floor, Ceiling, and Wall. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.