Occupation / job
Bus Drivers, School
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
At $47,920 against $50,020, Bus Drivers, School sits $1.00 an hour under the typical American job. A gap that small is not a reason to choose it or to rule it out; the spread and the entry cost are where the real decision is.
402,930 people do this work. An occupation this large has a published, well-known going rate — which means less scope to be underpaid and less scope to negotiate above it.
This work suits people who want to be left alone to do the job and are judged on whether the load arrived on time and intact.
No verified preparation time is on file for Bus Drivers, School. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
$38,650 to $58,430 — 1.5x, or $1,648 a month between the quarters. An unremarkable spread, which means the useful planning number for Bus Drivers, School is the bottom of it rather than the middle.
The 25th percentile is $38,650 — $18.58 an hour, and $11,370 below the $50,020 typical American job. Entry-level in this field means that number, not the midpoint, so budget against it.
Avoid it if the sedentary hours and the food available on the road would be a health problem for you.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 402,930 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
A 1.5x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $47,920 as where you might be after years in Bus Drivers, School, and $38,650 as where you would start.
Put in money rather than ratios: $38,650 at the 25th percentile, $47,920 at the midpoint, $58,430 at the 75th. $19,780 separates the quarter of Bus Drivers, School at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $58,430, the 75th percentile, is worth $10,510 a year more than the $47,920 midpoint and $19,780 more than the $38,650 a quarter of Bus Drivers, School settle for.
$9,270 down to $38,650, $10,510 up to $58,430: the midpoint of Bus Drivers, School is centred in its own middle half. That symmetry is why the median and the average would say much the same thing here, which is not true of most pages on this site.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $23.03 at the midpoint for Bus Drivers, School, $18.58 at the 25th percentile and $28.09 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 Bus Drivers, School for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $47,920 describes them.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $47,920 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