Occupation / job
Highway Maintenance 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
With a $50,260 median against a $50,020 national one, Highway Maintenance Workers is an average-paying occupation by construction — $20 a month either way. What separates it from the alternatives is not on this line.
154,960 people are employed as Highway Maintenance Workers. At that size there is a real ladder and enough churn that experience can be sold to a competitor rather than only accumulated where you are.
These construction-adjacent roles suit people who want site work organised around a specific competence — an inspection, a hazard, a system — rather than around one of the classic trades.
How long it takes to become one of the 154,960 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
A quarter of Highway Maintenance Workers earn under $43,500 and a quarter over $61,040 — 1.4x, or $17,540 apart. Narrow spreads usually mean a pay schedule, which is stability bought at the price of upside.
Even the bottom quarter, under $43,500, lands within $6,520 of the $50,020 typical American wage. The downside of Highway Maintenance Workers is not really the money.
Avoid it if you need a large employer base; these roles are thin on the ground outside major markets.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 154,960 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
Top quarter to bottom quarter is 1.4x. In a band that narrow, $50,260 is a genuinely representative number for Highway Maintenance Workers and the main variable left is where you live.
In cash terms the middle half of Highway Maintenance Workers runs $43,500 to $61,040 — $17,540 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $50,260.
The 75th percentile is $61,040. Reaching it from the $50,260 midpoint is $10,780 a year; reaching it from the $43,500 that the bottom quarter of Highway Maintenance Workers earn is $17,540.
It is $6,760 from $50,260 down to $43,500 but $10,780 up to $61,040. When a range leans this far upward, the interesting question is what puts someone in the top half, because the money is disproportionately there.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $20.91 at the bottom quarter, $24.16 at the midpoint, $29.34 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
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Highway Maintenance Workers. The self-employed are excluded, so $50,260 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
The hourly number on this page is $50,260 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Highway Maintenance Workers, 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