Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand offer sit among all 2,982,530 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

May 2024 employment stood at 2,982,530, or 1.93% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 382,740 jobs; the top three states sum to 26.5% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Nevada posts a location quotient of 1.81, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

Read the ladder as a career path in numbers: $35,410 at the 25th percentile, $38,940 at the middle, $46,370 at the 75th. The full 10-to-90 range runs $22,370, a ratio of 1.7 to 1. Where a specific job offer lands on that range says more about the role's level than the occupation's headline median does.

Pay by state

The state spread for Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand runs from the $45,850 median in Washington down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (382,740 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand stands number 7 by employment and number 720 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 26% less than its group median, and it supplies 21.9% of the group's 13,645,590 jobs. In 31 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $38,940, 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

Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN is the largest metro employer with 146,710 jobs, 4.9% 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, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $24,380 a year, against $51,280 in Anchorage, AK. 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

As a household number, $38,940 a year is $3,245 a month gross, $1,498 every two weeks, $749 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($35,410) to the 75th ($46,370) is worth $10,960 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 $3,245 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 $42,834 would sit between the median ($38,940) and the 75th percentile ($46,370), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $35,410, is $3,530 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

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Gas Compressor and Gas Pumping Station Operators, Rail Yard Engineers, Dinkey Operators, and Hostlers, Bridge and Lock Tenders, Hoist and Winch Operators, Motorboat Operators, Rail Transportation Workers, All Other. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.