Occupation / job
Railroad Conductors and Yardmasters
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
Railroad Conductors and Yardmasters pays $78,000 at the midpoint, 56% above the $50,020 national figure. Premiums that size are rationed by something; find out what before the salary does your thinking for you.
46,440 people are employed in this work. Big enough for a real market in every major metro, small enough that experience in Railroad Conductors and Yardmasters is still a distinguishing thing to have.
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 46,440 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
$18,210 separates the bottom quarter at $65,610 from the top quarter at $83,820, a ratio of 1.3x. In a band that tight, moving up inside Railroad Conductors and Yardmasters pays less than moving out of it would.
Even the bottom quarter of Railroad Conductors and Yardmasters earns $65,610 — $31.54 an hour and $15,590 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Very little of this distribution is badly paid.
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. 46,440 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 1.3x ratio from $65,610 to $83,820 makes $78,000 a dependable planning number. Dependable is the whole offer here — there is not much room above it.
In cash terms the middle half of Railroad Conductors and Yardmasters runs $65,610 to $83,820 — $18,210 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $78,000.
The 75th percentile is $83,820. Reaching it from the $78,000 midpoint is $5,820 a year; reaching it from the $65,610 that the bottom quarter of Railroad Conductors and Yardmasters earn is $18,210.
Getting from $65,610 to the $78,000 midpoint is $12,390; getting from there to $83,820 is only $5,820. The hard part of the range is the lower half, which is also the half a newcomer starts in.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Railroad Conductors and Yardmasters is $37.50 an hour. The quarters sit at $31.54 and $40.29, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $78,000 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 $78,000 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Railroad Conductors and Yardmasters, 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