Occupation / job
Material Moving Workers, All Other
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
Material Moving Workers, All Other pays a median $41,800 against $50,020 across all occupations — $3.95 an hour of difference. At that distance the deciding variable is where you do it, not how long you have done it.
23,480 people do this work nationally. That is the size at which Material Moving Workers, All Other 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.
These roles suit people who prefer to be busy physically rather than sat still, and who value being able to find the same job in any city.
How long it takes to become one of the 23,480 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 $36,600 to $50,220 — $1,135 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.
A quarter of Material Moving Workers, All Other earn under $36,600, which is $13,420 short of the $50,020 national midpoint. Assume you start there and check whether the arithmetic still works.
Avoid it if your back would not take years of it, because the work does not get lighter with seniority.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 23,480 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, $41,800 is a genuinely representative number for Material Moving Workers, All Other and the main variable left is where you live.
In cash terms the middle half of Material Moving Workers, All Other runs $36,600 to $50,220 — $13,620 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $41,800.
Getting to $50,220, the 75th percentile, is worth $8,420 a year more than the $41,800 midpoint and $13,620 more than the $36,600 a quarter of Material Moving Workers, All Other settle for.
It is $5,200 from $41,800 down to $36,600 but $8,420 up to $50,220. When a range leans this far upward, the interesting question is what puts someone in the top half, because the money is disproportionately there.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Material Moving Workers, All Other is $20.09 an hour. The quarters sit at $17.59 and $24.14, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $41,800 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Material Moving Workers, All Other, the hourly figure is $41,800 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