Occupation / job
Refuse and Recyclable Material Collectors
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
Refuse and Recyclable Material Collectors pays $49,690, effectively level with the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — $330 apart, which is inside the noise of a single year’s survey. Treat this as an average-paying occupation and decide it on everything else.
National employment is 147,240. At that scale hiring is continuous, the market rate is well established, and your leverage comes from being credibly willing to go somewhere else.
These roles suit people who prefer to be busy physically rather than sat still, and who value being able to find the same job in any city.
How long it takes to become one of the 147,240 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
$39,080 to $62,020 — 1.6x, or $1,911 a month between the quarters. An unremarkable spread, which means the useful planning number for Refuse and Recyclable Material Collectors is the bottom of it rather than the middle.
A quarter of the field earns under $39,080 — $10,940 below the $50,020 the typical American job pays. That is the number to plan on for a first year, not the midpoint.
Avoid it if repetitive lifting would be unsustainable, or if you need pay that rises meaningfully with time served.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 147,240 people employed as Refuse and Recyclable Material Collectors; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
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 $49,690 as where you might be after years in Refuse and Recyclable Material Collectors, and $39,080 as where you would start.
The middle half of this field earns between $39,080 and $62,020. That is $22,940 of range, with $49,690 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Between $39,080 and $62,020 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $49,690. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $12,330; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $22,940.
From $49,690 it is $10,610 down to the bottom quarter and $12,330 up to the top. The upper half of the range is the longer one, which is the ordinary shape for work where experience compounds.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $18.78 at the bottom quarter, $23.88 at the midpoint, $29.81 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
The $49,690 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 Refuse and Recyclable Material Collectors, the hourly figure is $49,690 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