Occupation / job
Locomotive Engineers
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
$81,410 is $2,615 a month above the $50,020 the typical American job pays. Differences of that size in Locomotive Engineers are held in place by a barrier — a licence, a residency, a clearance — and the barrier is the real subject of this page.
33,470 people do this work nationally. That is the size at which Locomotive Engineers becomes a career rather than a post — enough employers in a normal city that leaving one of them is a decision rather than a crisis.
Rail work suits people who can work a rotating roster built around a network rather than a working day, in a highly rule-governed environment.
No verified preparation time is on file for Locomotive Engineers. 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
A quarter of Locomotive Engineers earn under $75,190 and a quarter over $93,260: 1.2x, and $18,070 between the ends. That is a narrow band — enough room to be paid better than average, not enough for the occupation to be a route to a materially different income.
The bottom quarter of this field earns $75,190 — $36.14 an hour, $25,170 above the $50,020 national midpoint. When even the worst-paid quarter of Locomotive Engineers is this far ahead, the barrier to entry is doing the work of keeping it there.
Avoid it if you need to live where the work is not — rail employment is tied to a fixed network and seniority governs the roster.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 33,470 figure counts people already working as Locomotive Engineers, 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
At 1.2x between $75,190 and $93,260, this is a narrow distribution. $81,410 is a reliable number to plan around, which is worth something — but so is knowing that outperforming the field will not be paid for.
Put in money rather than ratios: $75,190 at the 25th percentile, $81,410 at the midpoint, $93,260 at the 75th. $18,070 separates the quarter of Locomotive Engineers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $93,260, the 75th percentile, is worth $11,850 a year more than the $81,410 midpoint and $18,070 more than the $75,190 a quarter of Locomotive Engineers settle for.
The upper half of the middle range — $81,410 to $93,260, or $11,850 — is far longer than the lower half at $6,220. In a shape like this an average would flatter Locomotive Engineers considerably, and would describe nobody.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $36.14 at the bottom quarter, $39.13 at the midpoint, $44.83 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 Locomotive Engineers. The self-employed are excluded, so $81,410 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
The hourly number on this page is $81,410 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Locomotive Engineers, 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