Occupation / job
Crane and Tower Operators
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
Crane and Tower Operators pays $68,080 at the midpoint, 36% above the $50,020 national figure. Premiums that size are rationed by something; find out what before the salary does your thinking for you.
Employment stands at 42,890. Crane and Tower Operators is common enough to be recruited for continuously and specific enough that the experience travels — the combination that makes changing employer a working pay rise.
This work suits people who want to start earning immediately in a field that hires everywhere, and who are honest with themselves about the physical demand over years.
We carry no verified training length for Crane and Tower Operators — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
A quarter earn below $52,600 and a quarter above $83,200: a 1.6x ratio, $30,600 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.
Even the 25th percentile pays $52,600, $2,580 more than the $50,020 typical American job and $25.28 an hour. The floor, not the median, is the strongest financial argument for Crane and Tower Operators.
Avoid it if repetitive lifting would be unsustainable, or if you need pay that rises meaningfully with time served.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 42,890 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 1.6x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $68,080 as where you might be after years in Crane and Tower Operators, and $52,600 as where you would start.
The middle half of this field earns between $52,600 and $83,200. That is $30,600 of range, with $68,080 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
The 75th percentile is $83,200. Reaching it from the $68,080 midpoint is $15,120 a year; reaching it from the $52,600 that the bottom quarter of Crane and Tower Operators earn is $30,600.
$68,080 sits almost exactly in the middle of its own range — $15,480 above the bottom quarter, $15,120 below the top one. A symmetric distribution like this is the case where the median genuinely does describe the typical person.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Crane and Tower Operators is $32.73 an hour. The quarters sit at $25.28 and $40.00, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Crane and Tower Operators. The self-employed are excluded, so $68,080 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
The hourly number on this page is $68,080 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Crane and Tower Operators, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else