Wellhead Pumpers 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 Wellhead Pumpers ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $54,450. 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

The occupation employed 17,350 people in May 2024, 0.01% of every job BLS counted. Texas is the largest employer at 9,910 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 70.0% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in North Dakota, whose location quotient of 19.10 says this work is 19.10 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $58,360 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($97,470) is 2.5 times the 10th percentile ($39,110), a gap of $58,360 a year. The mean of $70,070 sitting above the median of $70,010 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts Texas first at 9,910 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, North Dakota would lead at $83,450. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Wellhead Pumpers stands number 586 by employment and number 286 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 34% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.1% of the group's 13,645,590 jobs. In 5 of the 20 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $70,010, 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

Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX is the largest metro employer with 3,940 jobs, 22.7% 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, Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $75,650 a year, against $77,800 in Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX. 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 $70,010 works out to $5,834 a month before taxes, $2,693 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,346 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($54,450) to the 75th ($80,720) is worth $26,270 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 $77,011 would sit between the median ($70,010) and the 75th percentile ($80,720), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $54,450, is $15,560 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: Railroad Brake, Signal, and Switch Operators and Locomotive Firers, Ambulance Drivers and Attendants, Except Emergency Medical Technicians, Transportation Workers, All Other, Tank Car, Truck, and Ship Loaders, Aircraft Cargo Handling Supervisors, Subway and Streetcar Operators. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.