Occupation / job
Pile Driver 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
At $73,300 against a $50,020 midpoint, Pile Driver Operators pays $23,280 a year more than the typical American job — $11.19 an hour. Nothing pays that much more for free, and the thing it is paid for is what you should be reading about.
Employment as Pile Driver Operators stands at 2,310. That is small enough that your local market may have a dozen posts in total; mobility will matter more to your earnings than seniority does.
This work suits people who like finishing something physical, can work in weather, and are content that the site rather than the office sets the hours.
How long it takes to become one of the 2,310 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
$47,920 separates the bottom quarter of Pile Driver Operators at $58,510 from the top quarter at $106,430. At a 1.8x ratio the midpoint is a weak guide to your own first year — find out which end you would be entering at.
The bottom quarter of Pile Driver Operators earns $58,510 or more — $8,490 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Three quarters of the field is well paid and the last quarter is still paid better than most of the country.
Avoid it if a gap between projects would leave you without income you could not cover.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 2,310 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
At 1.8x, the distribution for Pile Driver Operators is open enough that specialisation starts to pay. The distance from $58,510 to $106,430 is mostly what you can do that others in the same title cannot.
Put in money rather than ratios: $58,510 at the 25th percentile, $73,300 at the midpoint, $106,430 at the 75th. $47,920 separates the quarter of Pile Driver Operators at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $106,430, the 75th percentile, is worth $33,130 a year more than the $73,300 midpoint and $47,920 more than the $58,510 a quarter of Pile Driver Operators settle for.
From $73,300 the drop to $58,510 is $14,790 and the climb to $106,430 is $33,130. When the upper half of the range is that much longer, the average is pulled well above the median — which is exactly why this site publishes the median.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $28.12 at the bottom quarter, $35.24 at the midpoint, $51.16 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
The $73,300 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.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $73,300 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