Railroad Conductors and Yardmasters Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

A percentile marks a point in this occupation's pay distribution: the worker one quarter of the way up the Railroad Conductors and Yardmasters ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $63,480. BLS top-codes very high wages ($239,200+ a year, $115.00+ an hour) and marks estimates it cannot publish as n/p.

Employment and concentration

With 42,710 jobs nationally, Railroad Conductors and Yardmasters make up 0.03% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: New York alone holds 6,740 of those jobs, the top three states hold 32.0%, and the deepest concentration sits in Nebraska (location quotient 4.31, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

One in ten workers in this field earns $53,490 or less, and one in ten earns $103,350 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 1.9 to 1 and the annual gap is $49,860. The mean ($75,490) versus median ($74,080) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts New York first at 6,740 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, Indiana would lead at $82,460. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Railroad Conductors and Yardmasters stands number 415 by employment and number 259 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 42% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.3% of the group's 13,645,590 jobs. In 13 of the 36 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $74,080, 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 3,860 jobs, 9.0% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 5 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, New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $72,850 a year, against $72,850 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. 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 Railroad Conductors and Yardmasters paycheck, gross, is $2,849 every two weeks on an annual $74,080, which is $6,173 a month and $1,425 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($63,480) to the 75th ($82,060) is worth $18,580 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 $81,488 would sit between the median ($74,080) and the 75th percentile ($82,060), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $63,480, is $10,600 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: Ambulance Drivers and Attendants, Except Emergency Medical Technicians, Transportation Workers, All Other, Tank Car, Truck, and Ship Loaders, Aircraft Cargo Handling Supervisors, Subway and Streetcar Operators, Ship Engineers. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.