Taxi Drivers 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 Taxi Drivers ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $31,320. 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 17,510 jobs nationally, Taxi Drivers make up 0.01% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: Nevada alone holds 3,600 of those jobs, the top three states hold 37.1%, and the deepest concentration sits in Nevada (location quotient 20.75, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

Read the ladder as a career path in numbers: $31,320 at the 25th percentile, $36,220 at the middle, $40,630 at the 75th. The full 10-to-90 range runs $34,640, a ratio of 2.3 to 1. Where a specific job offer lands on that range says more about the role's level than the occupation's headline median does.

Pay by state

The state spread for Taxi Drivers runs from the $49,090 median in Nevada down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in Nevada (3,600 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Taxi Drivers stands number 584 by employment and number 771 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 0.1% of the group's 13,645,590 jobs. In 6 of the 26 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $36,220, 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

Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV is the largest metro employer with 3,580 jobs, 20.4% 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, Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $28,520 a year, against $49,370 in Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV. 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

The median annual wage of $36,220 works out to $3,018 a month before taxes, $1,393 per biweekly paycheck, and $697 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($31,320) to the 75th ($40,630) is worth $9,310 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 $39,842 would sit between the median ($36,220) and the 75th percentile ($40,630), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $31,320, is $4,900 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

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Locomotive Engineers, Sailors and Marine Oilers, Aircraft Service Attendants, Conveyor Operators and Tenders, Passenger Attendants, Material Moving Workers, All Other. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.