Occupation / job
Meter Readers, Utilities
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
Meter Readers, Utilities pays $48,150, effectively level with the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — $1,870 apart, which is inside the noise of a single year’s survey. Treat this as an average-paying occupation and decide it on everything else.
Employment as Meter Readers, Utilities is 19,430 nationally. At that size a large city holds a working market and a small one holds almost none, so where you live changes the number of employers available to you by an order of magnitude.
These roles suit people who like solving a logistics puzzle that changes every hour, and who can stay calm while several people wait on the answer.
We carry no verified training length for Meter Readers, Utilities — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
$39,410 to $65,750 — 1.7x, or $2,195 a month between the quarters. An unremarkable spread, which means the useful planning number for Meter Readers, Utilities is the bottom of it rather than the middle.
A quarter of the field earns under $39,410 — $10,610 below the $50,020 the typical American job pays. That is the number to plan on for a first year, not the midpoint.
Avoid it if you need to finish a task before starting the next; that is not how this desk works.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 19,430 people employed as Meter Readers, Utilities; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
At 1.7x between $39,410 and $65,750 this is a normally shaped occupation. $48,150 is what the middle of Meter Readers, Utilities earns after the years it takes to get there, which is not the same as what it offers you now.
Put in money rather than ratios: $39,410 at the 25th percentile, $48,150 at the midpoint, $65,750 at the 75th. $26,340 separates the quarter of Meter Readers, Utilities at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $65,750, the 75th percentile, is worth $17,600 a year more than the $48,150 midpoint and $26,340 more than the $39,410 a quarter of Meter Readers, Utilities settle for.
The upper half of the middle range — $48,150 to $65,750, or $17,600 — is far longer than the lower half at $8,740. In a shape like this an average would flatter Meter Readers, Utilities considerably, and would describe nobody.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $23.14 at the midpoint for Meter Readers, Utilities, $18.94 at the 25th percentile and $31.61 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $48,150 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 Meter Readers, Utilities, the hourly figure is $48,150 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