Air Traffic Controllers

$148,080 puts Air Traffic Controllers among the highest medians BLS publishes, roughly 196% above the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint. Pay at this level always has a gate in front of it: a residency, a bar exam, a clearance, or a decade.

22,510 people do this work nationally. That is the size at which Air Traffic Controllers becomes a career rather than a post — enough employers in a normal city that leaving one of them is a decision rather than a crisis.

Air transportation work suits people who can follow a procedure exactly, every time, and who are comfortable that the whole safety case rests on that being true.

We carry no verified training length for Air Traffic Controllers — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.

$86,050 separates the bottom quarter of Air Traffic Controllers at $104,520 from the top quarter at $190,570. At a 1.8x ratio the midpoint is a weak guide to your own first year — find out which end you would be entering at.

The bottom quarter of this field earns $104,520 — $50.25 an hour, $54,500 above the $50,020 national midpoint. When even the worst-paid quarter of Air Traffic Controllers is this far ahead, the barrier to entry is doing the work of keeping it there.

Avoid it if irregular sleep, time zones and nights away would not be sustainable for your household.

There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 22,510 people employed as Air Traffic Controllers; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.

From $104,520 to $190,570 at a ratio of 1.8x is wide enough that two people with the same job title have materially different jobs. $148,080 sits in the middle of that and describes neither of them especially well.

The middle half of this field earns between $104,520 and $190,570. That is $86,050 of range, with $148,080 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.

Between $104,520 and $190,570 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $148,080. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $42,490; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $86,050.

$148,080 sits almost exactly in the middle of its own range — $43,560 above the bottom quarter, $42,490 below the top one. A symmetric distribution like this is the case where the median genuinely does describe the typical person.

Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $50.25 at the bottom quarter, $71.19 at the midpoint, $91.62 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.