Transportation Inspectors 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 Transportation Inspectors ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $58,650. 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 23,320 jobs nationally, Transportation Inspectors make up 0.02% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: New York alone holds 3,730 of those jobs, the top three states hold 36.5%, and the deepest concentration sits in Alaska (location quotient 4.18, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $97,030 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($137,120) is 3.4 times the 10th percentile ($40,090), a gap of $97,030 a year. The mean of $86,490 sitting above the median of $85,750 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 46 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is Alaska at $138,030; the jobs leader is New York:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Transportation Inspectors stands number 526 by employment and number 178 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 64% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.2% of the group's 13,645,590 jobs. In 17 of the 46 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $85,750, 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 3,990 jobs, 17.1% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 87 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, Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $66,620 a year, against $104,700 in Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX. 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 Transportation Inspectors paycheck, gross, is $3,298 every two weeks on an annual $85,750, which is $7,146 a month and $1,649 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($58,650) to the 75th ($105,020) is worth $46,370 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 $94,325 would sit between the median ($85,750) and the 75th percentile ($105,020), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $58,650, is $27,100 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

Sibling occupations in Transportation and Material Moving Occupations: Bus Drivers, School, Cleaners of Vehicles and Equipment, Shuttle Drivers and Chauffeurs, Bus Drivers, Transit and Intercity, Refuse and Recyclable Material Collectors, Parking Attendants. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.