Occupation / job
Pump Operators, Except Wellhead Pumpers
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
Pump Operators, Except Wellhead Pumpers pays $61,770 against $50,020 across all occupations — $979 a month more. Every premium is paid for something: find out whether it is the schooling, the licence, the hours or the risk before you decide you want it.
9,780 people work as Pump Operators, Except Wellhead Pumpers. That is enough for a functioning national market and not enough for a functioning local one — in most metros this is a few employers rather than a field you can move around inside.
This work suits people who want to start earning immediately in a field that hires everywhere, and who are honest with themselves about the physical demand over years.
How long it takes to become one of the 9,780 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 $47,560 and a quarter above $77,210: a 1.6x ratio, $29,650 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.
At $47,560, or $22.86 an hour, the bottom quarter of this work lands within $2,460 of the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — an unusually solid floor.
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. 9,780 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
1.6x between $47,560 and $77,210 is the ordinary shape of an occupation where experience and region both matter and neither dominates. $61,770 is a fair expectation by mid-career, not on day one.
Put in money rather than ratios: $47,560 at the 25th percentile, $61,770 at the midpoint, $77,210 at the 75th. $29,650 separates the quarter of Pump Operators, Except Wellhead Pumpers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Between $47,560 and $77,210 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $61,770. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $15,440; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $29,650.
$14,210 down to $47,560, $15,440 up to $77,210: the midpoint of Pump Operators, Except Wellhead Pumpers is centred in its own middle half. That symmetry is why the median and the average would say much the same thing here, which is not true of most pages on this site.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Pump Operators, Except Wellhead Pumpers is $29.69 an hour. The quarters sit at $22.86 and $37.12, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $61,770 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.
The hourly number on this page is $61,770 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Pump Operators, Except Wellhead Pumpers, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else