Material Moving Workers, All Other 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 ($33,280) to the 90th ($64,850). 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 25,190 jobs nationally, Material Moving Workers, All Other make up 0.02% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 8,910 of those jobs, the top three states hold 52.7%, and the deepest concentration sits in Louisiana (location quotient 4.64, 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: $31,570 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($64,850) is 1.9 times the 10th percentile ($33,280), a gap of $31,570 a year. The mean of $46,650 sitting above the median of $41,690 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts California first at 8,910 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, Washington would lead at $67,440. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Material Moving Workers, All Other stands number 512 by employment and number 674 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 20% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.2% of the group's 13,645,590 jobs. In 23 of the 37 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $41,690, 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

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA is the largest metro employer with 2,680 jobs, 10.6% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $38,600 a year, against $81,380 in New Orleans-Metairie, LA. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $3,474 a month before tax, $1,603 biweekly, $802 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($35,470) to the 75th ($50,850) is worth $15,380 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $45,859 would sit between the median ($41,690) and the 75th percentile ($50,850), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $35,470, is $6,220 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: Rail Yard Engineers, Dinkey Operators, and Hostlers, Bridge and Lock Tenders, Hoist and Winch Operators, Motorboat Operators, Rail Transportation Workers, All Other, Dredge Operators. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.