Occupation / job
Helpers--Extraction 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
Helpers--Extraction Workers pays $47,730, effectively level with the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — $2,290 apart, which is inside the noise of a single year’s survey. Treat this as an average-paying occupation and decide it on everything else.
Employment as Helpers--Extraction Workers stands at 6,700. That is small enough that your local market may have a dozen posts in total; mobility will matter more to your earnings than seniority does.
Extraction work suits people who will go where the deposit is, work a rotation away from home, and treat the safety regime as the actual condition of employment.
How long it takes to become one of the 6,700 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
The middle half runs $41,430 to $57,920 — $1,374 a month between the quarters, a 1.4x ratio. Spreads this narrow are usually set by a grade or a scale, so the negotiation you are imagining probably is not available.
The 25th percentile of $41,430 is only $8,590 off the $50,020 national midpoint. Being in the worst-paid quarter of Helpers--Extraction Workers still means being paid close to what the average American job pays.
Avoid it if you cannot relocate to where the deposit is, or if a downturn in the commodity cycle would leave you stranded.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 6,700 people employed as Helpers--Extraction 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, $47,730 is a genuinely representative number for Helpers--Extraction Workers and the main variable left is where you live.
In cash terms the middle half of Helpers--Extraction Workers runs $41,430 to $57,920 — $16,490 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $47,730.
Between $41,430 and $57,920 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $47,730. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $10,190; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $16,490.
The distance from the midpoint up to $57,920 is $10,190 — well over the $6,300 down to $41,430. Distributions leaning this way mean the median understates what the upper half of Helpers--Extraction Workers earns, and half the field is in that upper half.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $22.94 at the midpoint for Helpers--Extraction Workers, $19.91 at the 25th percentile and $27.84 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 Helpers--Extraction Workers for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $47,730 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Helpers--Extraction Workers, the hourly figure is $47,730 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