Refuse and Recyclable Material Collectors 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 Refuse and Recyclable Material Collectors ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $38,330. 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

May 2024 employment stood at 139,180, or 0.09% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 13,240 jobs; the top three states sum to 25.3% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Mississippi posts a location quotient of 1.71, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

One in ten workers in this field earns $31,810 or less, and one in ten earns $75,200 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.4 to 1 and the annual gap is $43,390. The mean ($51,210) versus median ($48,350) 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 California first at 13,240 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, Washington would lead at $71,440. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Refuse and Recyclable Material Collectors stands number 217 by employment and number 568 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 8% less than its group median, and it supplies 1.0% of the group's 13,645,590 jobs. In 22 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $48,350, 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 13,230 jobs, 9.5% of the national total. The first table ranks metros by employment; the second ranks them by mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs in the occupation, because a three-person metro can top a pay table by accident.

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, $21,600 a year, against $82,170 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. A gap that size between two metro labor markets is why the same occupation title can fund two very different budgets in two different cities.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $48,350 works out to $4,029 a month before taxes, $1,860 per biweekly paycheck, and $930 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($38,330) to the 75th ($61,010) is worth $22,680 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 $53,185 would sit between the median ($48,350) and the 75th percentile ($61,010), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $38,330, is $10,020 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: Cleaners of Vehicles and Equipment, Shuttle Drivers and Chauffeurs, Bus Drivers, Transit and Intercity, Parking Attendants, Flight Attendants, Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.