Occupation / job
Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand
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
Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand pays a median $40,240 against $50,020 across all occupations — $4.70 an hour of difference. At that distance the deciding variable is where you do it, not how long you have done it.
2,950,280 people are employed as Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand, which puts it among the largest occupations in the United States. At this scale you are never short of a vacancy and never scarce, and the second fact is why the first one is cheap.
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.
No verified preparation time is on file for Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
The quarters sit at $36,090 and $46,920, $902 a month apart at a ratio of 1.3x. Narrow enough that what you can expect is close to what everyone else gets.
A quarter of Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand earn under $36,090, which is $13,930 short of the $50,020 national midpoint. Assume you start there and check whether the arithmetic still works.
Avoid it if repetitive lifting would be unsustainable, or if you need pay that rises meaningfully with time served.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 2,950,280 figure counts people already working as Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
A 1.3x ratio from $36,090 to $46,920 makes $40,240 a dependable planning number. Dependable is the whole offer here — there is not much room above it.
In cash terms the middle half of Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand runs $36,090 to $46,920 — $10,830 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $40,240.
Getting to $46,920, the 75th percentile, is worth $6,680 a year more than the $40,240 midpoint and $10,830 more than the $36,090 a quarter of Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand settle for.
The distance from the midpoint up to $46,920 is $6,680 — well over the $4,150 down to $36,090. Distributions leaning this way mean the median understates what the upper half of Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand earns, and half the field is in that upper half.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $17.35 at the bottom quarter, $19.34 at the midpoint, $22.55 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 Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand. The self-employed are excluded, so $40,240 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 $40,240 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