Ship Engineers 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 ($56,620) to the 90th ($162,370). 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 8,580 Ship Engineers jobs in May 2024, which is 0.01% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Alaska, where the location quotient is 18.12, meaning the occupation holds 18.12 times its national share of local jobs. Virginia employs the most people outright, 1,370 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 37.2% of the national total.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $105,750 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($162,370) is 2.9 times the 10th percentile ($56,620), a gap of $105,750 a year. The mean of $105,600 sitting above the median of $101,320 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Maryland posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $170,630, and Virginia the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Ship Engineers stands number 704 by employment and number 117 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 94% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.1% of the group's 13,645,590 jobs. In 11 of the 24 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $101,320, 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

Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk, VA-NC is the largest metro employer with 1,340 jobs, 15.6% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 23 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, Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk, VA-NC posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $87,240 a year, against $124,990 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

As a household number, $101,320 a year is $8,443 a month gross, $3,897 every two weeks, $1,948 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($71,720) to the 75th ($130,380) is worth $58,660 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $8,443 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $111,452 would sit between the median ($101,320) and the 75th percentile ($130,380), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $71,720, is $29,600 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

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Sailors and Marine Oilers, Aircraft Service Attendants, Conveyor Operators and Tenders, Passenger Attendants, Material Moving Workers, All Other, Transportation Inspectors. The full directory is on the Careers hub.