Occupation / job
Power Plant 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 $102,040 against a $50,020 national midpoint, Power Plant Operators pays 104% more than the typical American job — $52,020 a year of difference. Read the entry requirements before the number.
29,320 people do this work nationally. That is the size at which Power Plant Operators 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 take a licence or a certification seriously and are comfortable being trusted with a system most people never think about.
How long it takes to become one of the 29,320 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 $79,690 to $119,080 — $3,282 a month between the quarters, a 1.5x ratio. Spreads this narrow are usually set by a grade or a scale, so the negotiation you are imagining probably is not available.
The 25th percentile is $79,690, $29,670 above the $50,020 typical American job. When even the floor is this high, the thing to investigate is the entry requirement rather than the pay.
Avoid it if you would not want the responsibility of being the person on shift when the system goes out of range.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 29,320 figure counts people already working as Power Plant 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
Top quarter to bottom quarter is 1.5x. In a band that narrow, $102,040 is a genuinely representative number for Power Plant Operators and the main variable left is where you live.
Put in money rather than ratios: $79,690 at the 25th percentile, $102,040 at the midpoint, $119,080 at the 75th. $39,390 separates the quarter of Power Plant Operators at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $119,080. Reaching it from the $102,040 midpoint is $17,040 a year; reaching it from the $79,690 that the bottom quarter of Power Plant Operators earn is $39,390.
The fall from $102,040 to the $79,690 bottom quarter is $22,350; the climb to the $119,080 top quarter is $17,040. Slightly more of the range lies below the midpoint than above it, so the downside is the bigger movement here.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $49.05 at the midpoint for Power Plant Operators, $38.31 at the 25th percentile and $57.25 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $102,040 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 Power Plant Operators, the hourly figure is $102,040 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