Occupation / job
Hoist and Winch 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
A $56,450 midpoint puts Hoist and Winch Operators $535 a month ahead of the $50,020 typical American job. Real, but small enough that a change of employer or metro would move it as much as the occupation itself does.
Employment as Hoist and Winch Operators stands at 2,600. 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.
Material moving suits people who want physical work they can start quickly, in a part of the labour market that hires continuously and across most of the country.
How long it takes to become one of the 2,600 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 gap between the bottom quarter of Hoist and Winch Operators at $42,690 and the top quarter at $94,350 is $51,660 — a ratio of 2.2x. Wide enough that the headline median describes almost nobody, and treating it as your number is a planning error.
Even the bottom quarter, under $42,690, lands within $7,330 of the $50,020 typical American wage. The downside of Hoist and Winch Operators is not really the money.
Avoid it if you need pay that rises with time served; in much of this category it does not.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 2,600 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
At 2.2x the range from $42,690 to $94,350 is doing more explaining than the job title is. Something sorts people across that distance — sector, speciality, or who employs them — and finding out what it is matters more than the $56,450 midpoint.
Put in money rather than ratios: $42,690 at the 25th percentile, $56,450 at the midpoint, $94,350 at the 75th. $51,660 separates the quarter of Hoist and Winch Operators at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $94,350, the 75th percentile, is worth $37,900 a year more than the $56,450 midpoint and $51,660 more than the $42,690 a quarter of Hoist and Winch Operators settle for.
The top quarter of Hoist and Winch Operators begins $37,900 above the $56,450 midpoint, while the bottom quarter starts only $13,760 below it. A range stretched that far in one direction is the signature of a field where a small group earns a great deal more than the middle does.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Hoist and Winch Operators is $27.13 an hour. The quarters sit at $20.52 and $45.36, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
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 Hoist and Winch Operators for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $56,450 describes them.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $56,450 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