Occupation / job
Motorboat 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
Motorboat Operators pays $47,520, effectively level with the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — $2,500 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.
National employment of 2,480 makes this a small field. Small fields are relationship markets: the people already in Motorboat Operators tend to know who is hiring before the posting exists.
Water transportation suits people who can be away from home for the length of a voyage or a hitch, and who want the compressed time off that comes with it.
How long it takes to become one of the 2,480 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
A quarter earn below $42,760 and a quarter above $69,010: a 1.6x ratio, $26,250 between the ends. That is an ordinary working spread, which also means experience and location explain most of it and there is no shortcut through the middle.
The 25th percentile of $42,760 is only $7,260 off the $50,020 national midpoint. Being in the worst-paid quarter of Motorboat Operators still means being paid close to what the average American job pays.
Avoid it if weeks or months away from home at a time would not work for the people you live with.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 2,480 figure counts people already working as Motorboat Operators, 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 1.6x between $42,760 and $69,010 this is a normally shaped occupation. $47,520 is what the middle of Motorboat Operators 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: $42,760 at the 25th percentile, $47,520 at the midpoint, $69,010 at the 75th. $26,250 separates the quarter of Motorboat Operators at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $69,010. Reaching it from the $47,520 midpoint is $21,490 a year; reaching it from the $42,760 that the bottom quarter of Motorboat Operators earn is $26,250.
The top quarter of Motorboat Operators begins $21,490 above the $47,520 midpoint, while the bottom quarter starts only $4,760 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.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $20.55 at the bottom quarter, $22.84 at the midpoint, $33.17 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 Motorboat Operators. The self-employed are excluded, so $47,520 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Motorboat Operators, the hourly figure is $47,520 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