Occupation / job
Rail Car Repairers
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
Rail Car Repairers pays $67,530 at the midpoint, 35% above the $50,020 national figure. Premiums that size are rationed by something; find out what before the salary does your thinking for you.
At 21,350 employed, this is a mid-sized occupation. In a normal city that means several possible employers and a genuine market rate, which is the point at which knowing the numbers on this page starts to be worth money.
Vehicle and equipment mechanics suit people who like diagnosis with an immediate test — the machine either runs afterwards or it does not, and there is no arguing with it.
No verified preparation time is on file for Rail Car Repairers. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
From $54,520 to $84,570 is $2,504 a month, or 1.6x bottom quarter to top. An ordinary spread like this is mostly years and geography; assume you enter near the bottom of it and that closing the gap takes a career rather than a move.
The bottom quarter of Rail Car Repairers still clears $54,520 — $4,500 above the $50,020 typical job. A high floor is the most valuable and least advertised property an occupation can have.
Avoid it if you would resent buying your own tools, which in this trade is a real and recurring cost.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 21,350 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 1.6x between $54,520 and $84,570 this is a normally shaped occupation. $67,530 is what the middle of Rail Car Repairers 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: $54,520 at the 25th percentile, $67,530 at the midpoint, $84,570 at the 75th. $30,050 separates the quarter of Rail Car Repairers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $84,570. Reaching it from the $67,530 midpoint is $17,040 a year; reaching it from the $54,520 that the bottom quarter of Rail Car Repairers earn is $30,050.
The climb from $67,530 to $84,570 is $17,040; the drop to $54,520 is $13,010. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Rail Car Repairers and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $26.21 at the bottom quarter, $32.46 at the midpoint, $40.65 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 Rail Car Repairers. The self-employed are excluded, so $67,530 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
The hourly number on this page is $67,530 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Rail Car Repairers, 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