Locomotive Engineers Salary and Pay
How much do Locomotive Engineers make?
Median pay for Locomotive Engineers is $77,400 a year ($37.21); the mean is $81,540. The occupation employed 31,990 people in May 2024, and its middle band runs from $73,410 to $84,230.
The complete pay picture for Locomotive Engineers: 31,990 jobs nationally, a median of $77,400, and the state and metro tables that show where that median is beaten and where it is not.
Updated November 5, 2026
Salary converter for this occupation
Hourly figures use the BLS full-time convention of 2,080 hours a year. The converter loads this occupation's own ladder, median $77,400 first; type any offer into the custom box to price it against the same year.
The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)
| Pay level | Annual wage | Hourly wage |
|---|---|---|
| 10th percentile | $60,980 | $29.32 |
| 25th percentile | $73,410 | $35.29 |
| Median (50th) | $77,400 | $37.21 |
| 75th percentile | $84,230 | $40.49 |
| 90th percentile | $100,690 | $48.41 |
The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($60,980) to the 90th ($100,690). 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
The occupation employed 31,990 people in May 2024, 0.02% of every job BLS counted. Texas is the largest employer at 4,040 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 24.5% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Montana, whose location quotient of 9.13 says this work is 9.13 times as dense there as it is nationwide.
Read the ladder as a career path in numbers: $73,410 at the 25th percentile, $77,400 at the middle, $84,230 at the 75th. The full 10-to-90 range runs $39,710, 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
Sorted by employment, the table below puts Texas first at 4,040 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, New York would lead at $107,290. Both orderings are printed in one table:
| State | Employment | Jobs per 1,000 | Location quotient | Mean annual | Median annual |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Texas | 4,040 | 0.3 | 1.41 | $74,360 | $77,080 |
| Illinois | 2,130 | 0.4 | 1.69 | $96,440 | $83,690 |
| California | 1,670 | 0.1 | 0.45 | $71,660 | $74,710 |
| Iowa | 1,520 | 1.0 | 4.68 | $82,020 | $87,550 |
| Pennsylvania | 1,460 | 0.2 | 1.17 | $79,330 | $81,210 |
| New York | 1,290 | 0.1 | 0.65 | $96,020 | $107,290 |
| Kansas | 990 | 0.7 | 3.32 | $73,010 | $76,680 |
| Montana | 970 | 1.9 | 9.13 | $81,150 | $81,160 |
| Georgia | 870 | 0.2 | 0.87 | $77,960 | $75,680 |
| Indiana | 860 | 0.3 | 1.30 | $75,700 | $63,160 |
| Missouri | 810 | 0.3 | 1.33 | $75,570 | $76,910 |
| Washington | 810 | 0.2 | 1.11 | $69,370 | $73,410 |
| Minnesota | 730 | 0.2 | 1.21 | $77,440 | $79,370 |
| Nebraska | 720 | 0.7 | 3.43 | $80,200 | $84,870 |
| Arkansas | 700 | 0.5 | 2.63 | $75,220 | $77,010 |
| Florida | 620 | 0.1 | 0.31 | $79,530 | $82,000 |
| Tennessee | 610 | 0.2 | 0.90 | $88,200 | $76,290 |
| Oregon | 530 | 0.3 | 1.31 | $75,740 | $77,210 |
| Virginia | 520 | 0.1 | 0.62 | $70,240 | $61,350 |
| Massachusetts | 500 | 0.1 | 0.67 | $100,540 | $104,950 |
| Alabama | 490 | 0.2 | 1.14 | $70,230 | $73,780 |
| Colorado | 450 | 0.2 | 0.75 | $77,020 | $79,960 |
| Kentucky | 400 | 0.2 | 0.96 | $76,260 | $79,690 |
| Wisconsin | 400 | 0.1 | 0.66 | $80,230 | $82,190 |
| Arizona | 380 | 0.1 | 0.58 | $83,940 | $81,170 |
| Connecticut | 360 | 0.2 | 1.02 | $97,100 | $103,010 |
| Utah | 350 | 0.2 | 0.99 | $77,300 | $79,800 |
| Oklahoma | 330 | 0.2 | 0.93 | $84,570 | $86,520 |
| Delaware | 300 | 0.6 | 3.05 | $88,420 | $82,920 |
| North Carolina | 260 | 0.1 | 0.26 | $65,300 | $64,110 |
| South Carolina | 240 | 0.1 | 0.51 | n/p | n/p |
| West Virginia | 220 | 0.3 | 1.53 | $71,000 | $72,660 |
| Ohio | 190 | 0.0 | 0.16 | $66,720 | $62,130 |
| South Dakota | 150 | 0.3 | 1.57 | $70,480 | $67,950 |
| Alaska | 80 | 0.2 | 1.20 | n/p | n/p |
| New Hampshire | 60 | 0.1 | 0.41 | $67,760 | $65,370 |
| New Jersey | n/p | n/p | n/p | $85,160 | $84,230 |
| Wyoming | n/p | n/p | n/p | $82,080 | $76,990 |
The occupation in context
Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Locomotive Engineers stands number 469 by employment and number 233 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 48% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.2% of the group's 13,645,590 jobs. In 18 of the 36 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $77,400, 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
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX is the largest metro employer with 240 jobs, 0.8% 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
| Metropolitan area | Employment | Mean annual | Median annual |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 240 | $59,730 | $64,170 |
| Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA | 150 | $80,890 | $80,490 |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 40 | $64,950 | $63,750 |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | n/p | $69,930 | $72,730 |
What the median pay looks like as a budget
The median Locomotive Engineers paycheck, gross, is $2,977 every two weeks on an annual $77,400, which is $6,450 a month and $1,488 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($73,410) to the 75th ($84,230) is worth $10,820 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 $85,140 would sit between the median ($77,400) and the 75th percentile ($84,230), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $73,410, is $3,990 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
The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Ship Engineers, Traffic Technicians, Gas Compressor and Gas Pumping Station Operators, Rail Yard Engineers, Dinkey Operators, and Hostlers, Bridge and Lock Tenders, Hoist and Winch Operators. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.
Frequently asked questions
How much do Locomotive Engineers make an hour?
The median hourly wage is $37.21, and the mean hourly wage is $39.20, from the May 2024 OEWS estimates. Annual figures for Locomotive Engineers use the survey's 2,080-hour year where a conversion is needed, which is how the $77,400 annual median and the hourly figures reconcile.
Which state pays Locomotive Engineers the most?
New York, with a median annual wage of $107,290 across 1,290 jobs. The full state table on this page ranks every publishing state by employment and shows median and mean side by side.
How big is the Locomotive Engineers workforce?
31,990 wage and salary workers in May 2024, 0.02% of U.S. employment in the survey. Employment concentrates most in Montana by location quotient (9.13).
How current is this Locomotive Engineers salary data?
These are the May 2024 OEWS estimates behind the $77,400 median and the 31,990 job count on this page, released by BLS on April 2, 2025 and downloaded on November 5, 2026. OEWS is an employer survey, so those figures describe wages actually paid in this occupation, not advertised ranges.