Occupation / job
Hazardous Materials Removal Workers
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 $49,450 median against $50,020 across all occupations puts Hazardous Materials Removal Workers within $47 a month of the exact middle of the American labour market. Nothing in the headline number argues either way.
Employment stands at 51,710. Hazardous Materials Removal Workers 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.
These roles suit people who have built a specific competence around construction — a hazard, an inspection, an installation type — and want the site work without the trade’s full apprenticeship.
How long it takes to become one of the 51,710 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
Between $44,720 and $61,530 there is $16,810, a ratio of 1.4x. Tight distributions are predictable, and predictable cuts both ways: little risk of being badly underpaid, little prospect of doing much better.
At $44,720 — $21.50 an hour — the 25th percentile of this field sits essentially at the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint. Being in the bottom quarter of Hazardous Materials Removal Workers still means being paid like the average American worker.
Avoid it if you need a broad employer base; these roles concentrate in a small number of firms.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 51,710 people employed as Hazardous Materials Removal Workers; 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.
What the spread tells you
Top quarter to bottom quarter is 1.4x. In a band that narrow, $49,450 is a genuinely representative number for Hazardous Materials Removal Workers and the main variable left is where you live.
Put in money rather than ratios: $44,720 at the 25th percentile, $49,450 at the midpoint, $61,530 at the 75th. $16,810 separates the quarter of Hazardous Materials Removal Workers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $61,530, the 75th percentile, is worth $12,080 a year more than the $49,450 midpoint and $16,810 more than the $44,720 a quarter of Hazardous Materials Removal Workers settle for.
The upper half of the middle range — $49,450 to $61,530, or $12,080 — is far longer than the lower half at $4,730. In a shape like this an average would flatter Hazardous Materials Removal Workers considerably, and would describe nobody.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Hazardous Materials Removal Workers is $23.77 an hour. The quarters sit at $21.50 and $29.58, 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 Hazardous Materials Removal Workers. The self-employed are excluded, so $49,450 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $49,450 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