Transportation and Material Moving: pay for 50 occupations, May 2025

In short

• Highest median pay in this field: Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers, $232,140 a year.
• Lowest: Parking Attendants, $35,150 a year.
• Most jobs: Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand (2,950,280), Stockers and Order Fillers (2,833,810) and Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers (2,062,040).
• For comparison, the median for all occupations in the country was $50,980 a year.

Sorted by median pay, highest first. "Not published" in the yearly or hourly column means BLS releases only the other one for that occupation.

The field as a whole

Transportation and Material Moving holds 13,677,150 of the 155,495,730 jobs in the national figures, about 9 in every 100. Its median pay of $44,350 a year is 13% below the median for all occupations ($50,980), which places it number 16 of the 22 fields. Across the whole field, the lowest-paid tenth earned less than $31,060 and the highest-paid tenth more than $72,440; the middle half earned between $36,290 and $55,990. The average was $49,850, 12% above the median.

Inside the field

Inside the field, the best-paid occupation with a published yearly median earns 6.6 times the lowest ($232,140 against $35,150). 27 of the 50 occupations with a yearly median are above the national median of $50,980, and 23 are below it. The occupation in the middle of the field's list is Rail Transportation Workers, All Other, at $56,360. Jobs are unevenly spread: the three largest occupations hold 57% of the field's jobs, while the smallest, Dredge Operators, has 1,040. Pay stretches furthest within Commercial Pilots, where the highest-paid tenth earn over $266,620 and the lowest-paid tenth under $58,850.

Reading the field

Pay also moves with place. For the field's largest occupation, Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand, the state medians run from $24,560 in Puerto Rico to $46,280 in Minnesota; its own page has every state. The Bureau of Labor Statistics sorts every occupation into one field by the work done, not by the industry of the employer, so an accountant at a hospital is counted under business and financial operations, not health care.

Questions about this field

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Checked in November 2026. Figures are for employees, before tax, and leave out overtime pay and benefits. They are official statistics, not advice or a pay offer; see bls.gov/oes for the original tables.

All fields