Occupation / job
Bridge and Lock Tenders
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
A $57,700 midpoint puts Bridge and Lock Tenders $7,680 above the $50,020 typical American job — a 15% premium paid for the training, the licence or the conditions. It is not free money and it disappears the moment you stop meeting the requirement.
With 3,040 employed nationally, Bridge and Lock Tenders is a small occupation. Small occupations are quiet: few postings, slow turnover, and a real chance that the person you would replace is not going anywhere.
These transport roles suit people who want to work around moving vehicles and traffic with a defined, learnable task and a clear end to the shift.
How long it takes to become one of the 3,040 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
$30,980 separates the bottom quarter of Bridge and Lock Tenders at $38,640 from the top quarter at $69,620. 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.
A quarter of Bridge and Lock Tenders earn under $38,640, which is $11,380 short of the $50,020 national midpoint. Assume you start there and check whether the arithmetic still works.
Avoid it if working beside live traffic in all weather is not a risk you want to take repeatedly.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 3,040 figure counts people already working as Bridge and Lock Tenders, 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
A ratio of 1.8x — $38,640 to $69,620 — is wide enough that specialising inside Bridge and Lock Tenders pays measurably. $57,700 is the middle of a range you can move within.
The middle half of this field earns between $38,640 and $69,620. That is $30,980 of range, with $57,700 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Between $38,640 and $69,620 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $57,700. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $11,920; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $30,980.
Getting from $38,640 to the $57,700 midpoint is $19,060; getting from there to $69,620 is only $11,920. The hard part of the range is the lower half, which is also the half a newcomer starts in.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $18.57 at the bottom quarter, $27.74 at the midpoint, $33.47 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.
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 Bridge and Lock Tenders for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $57,700 describes them.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $57,700 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else