Motor Vehicle Operators, 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 ($25,690) to the 90th ($64,940). 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

BLS counted 50,330 Motor Vehicle Operators, All Other jobs in May 2024, which is 0.03% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in District of Columbia, where the location quotient is 4.28, meaning the occupation holds 4.28 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 4,210 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 22.8% of the national total.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $39,250 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($64,940) is 2.5 times the 10th percentile ($25,690), a gap of $39,250 a year. The mean of $40,980 sitting above the median of $36,260 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 4,210 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, Alaska would lead at $70,990. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Motor Vehicle Operators, All Other stands number 389 by employment and number 770 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 31% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.4% of the group's 13,645,590 jobs. In 27 of the 50 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $36,260, 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 3,130 jobs, 6.2% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 173 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, Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $31,360 a year, against $57,830 in Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN. 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 annual wage of $36,260 works out to $3,022 a month before taxes, $1,395 per biweekly paycheck, and $697 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($30,250) to the 75th ($47,130) is worth $16,880 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 $39,886 would sit between the median ($36,260) and the 75th percentile ($47,130), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $30,250, is $6,010 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: Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers, Automotive and Watercraft Service Attendants, Commercial Pilots, Machine Feeders and Offbearers, Railroad Conductors and Yardmasters, Crane and Tower Operators. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.