Occupation / job
Rail Transportation Workers, All Other
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
A $56,360 midpoint puts Rail Transportation Workers, All Other $528 a month ahead of the $50,020 typical American job. Real, but small enough that a change of employer or metro would move it as much as the occupation itself does.
There are 1,120 of these posts in the country. Plan on the assumption that the job will not appear where you already live, because on those numbers it usually will not.
Rail work suits people who can work a rotating roster built around a network rather than a working day, in a highly rule-governed environment.
How long it takes to become one of the 1,120 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 $47,570 and a quarter above $74,090: a 1.6x ratio, $26,520 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 $47,570 — $22.87 an hour — the 25th percentile of this field sits essentially at the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint. Being in the bottom quarter of Rail Transportation Workers, All Other still means being paid like the average American worker.
Avoid it if you need to live where the work is not — rail employment is tied to a fixed network and seniority governs the roster.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 1,120 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
A 1.6x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $56,360 as where you might be after years in Rail Transportation Workers, All Other, and $47,570 as where you would start.
In cash terms the middle half of Rail Transportation Workers, All Other runs $47,570 to $74,090 — $26,520 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $56,360.
Between $47,570 and $74,090 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $56,360. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $17,730; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $26,520.
The upper half of the middle range — $56,360 to $74,090, or $17,730 — is far longer than the lower half at $8,790. In a shape like this an average would flatter Rail Transportation Workers, All Other considerably, and would describe nobody.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $27.09 at the midpoint for Rail Transportation Workers, All Other, $22.87 at the 25th percentile and $35.62 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $56,360 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 $56,360 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Rail Transportation Workers, All Other, 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