Water and Wastewater Treatment Plant and System Operators Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Water and Wastewater Treatment Plant and System Operators offer sit among all 126,750 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

The occupation employed 126,750 people in May 2024, 0.08% of every job BLS counted. California is the largest employer at 11,260 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 23.0% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Wyoming, whose location quotient of 3.12 says this work is 3.12 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $48,290 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($86,160) is 2.3 times the 10th percentile ($37,870), a gap of $48,290 a year. The mean of $60,620 sitting above the median of $58,260 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, 50 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is California at $82,100; the jobs leader is California:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Water and Wastewater Treatment Plant and System Operators stands number 235 by employment and number 435 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Production Occupations, the group median wage is $46,020 across 105 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 27% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.4% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 29 of the 50 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $58,260, 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 3,310 jobs, 2.6% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 369 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, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $27,390 a year, against $114,190 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. 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, $58,260 a year is $4,855 a month gross, $2,241 every two weeks, $1,120 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($47,020) to the 75th ($71,280) is worth $24,260 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 $4,855 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 $64,086 would sit between the median ($58,260) and the 75th percentile ($71,280), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $47,020, is $11,240 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Production Occupations

Sibling occupations in Production Occupations: Lathe and Turning Machine Tool Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic, Ophthalmic Laboratory Technicians, Fiberglass Laminators and Fabricators, Chemical Plant and System Operators, Tailors, Dressmakers, and Custom Sewers, Furnace, Kiln, Oven, Drier, and Kettle Operators and Tenders. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.