Occupation / job
Aircraft Cargo Handling Supervisors
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
The $58,170 midpoint sits $3.91 an hour above the $50,020 typical American job. That is a 16% premium, and premiums are rationed: whatever rations this one is the thing standing between you and Aircraft Cargo Handling Supervisors.
Employment as Aircraft Cargo Handling Supervisors is 9,760 nationally. At that size a large city holds a working market and a small one holds almost none, so where you live changes the number of employers available to you by an order of magnitude.
Supervising transport and material moving suits people who can hold a schedule together when a vehicle, a driver or a dock has just removed itself from the plan.
How long it takes to become one of the 9,760 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.
Who should not do this
A quarter earn below $49,820 and a quarter above $78,530: a 1.6x ratio, $28,710 between the ends. That is an ordinary working spread, which also means experience and location explain most of it and there is no shortcut through the middle.
The bottom quarter of Aircraft Cargo Handling Supervisors still clears $49,820 — $200 above the $50,020 typical job. A high floor is the most valuable and least advertised property an occupation can have.
Avoid it if you could not be reachable when a load, a driver or a dock fails outside working hours.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 9,760 figure counts people already working as Aircraft Cargo Handling Supervisors, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
At 1.6x between $49,820 and $78,530 this is a normally shaped occupation. $58,170 is what the middle of Aircraft Cargo Handling Supervisors earns after the years it takes to get there, which is not the same as what it offers you now.
The middle half of this field earns between $49,820 and $78,530. That is $28,710 of range, with $58,170 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Between $49,820 and $78,530 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $58,170. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $20,360; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $28,710.
The upper half of the middle range — $58,170 to $78,530, or $20,360 — is far longer than the lower half at $8,350. In a shape like this an average would flatter Aircraft Cargo Handling Supervisors considerably, and would describe nobody.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $27.96 at the midpoint for Aircraft Cargo Handling Supervisors, $23.95 at the 25th percentile and $37.75 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Aircraft Cargo Handling Supervisors for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $58,170 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Aircraft Cargo Handling Supervisors, the hourly figure is $58,170 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else