Occupation / job
Rotary Drill Operators, Oil and Gas
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
Rotary Drill Operators, Oil and Gas pays $67,890 at the midpoint, 36% above the $50,020 national figure. Premiums that size are rationed by something; find out what before the salary does your thinking for you.
Nationally 12,600 people do this. That is a real occupation with a thin local presence — enough that Rotary Drill Operators, Oil and Gas is a career, not enough that you can assume a second employer down the road.
This work suits people who will trade location and schedule for pay, and who take the safety regime as seriously as the operator requires rather than as seriously as they personally feel like.
How long it takes to become one of the 12,600 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
From $53,810 to $81,360 is $2,295 a month, or 1.5x 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.
Even the 25th percentile pays $53,810, $3,790 more than the $50,020 typical American job and $25.87 an hour. The floor, not the median, is the strongest financial argument for Rotary Drill Operators, Oil and Gas.
Avoid it if working a rotation away from home would not be sustainable for the people you live with.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 12,600 figure counts people already working as Rotary Drill Operators, Oil and Gas, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
A 1.5x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $67,890 as where you might be after years in Rotary Drill Operators, Oil and Gas, and $53,810 as where you would start.
The middle half of this field earns between $53,810 and $81,360. That is $27,550 of range, with $67,890 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Between $53,810 and $81,360 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $67,890. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $13,470; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $27,550.
$14,080 down to $53,810, $13,470 up to $81,360: the midpoint of Rotary Drill Operators, Oil and Gas 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 Rotary Drill Operators, Oil and Gas is $32.63 an hour. The quarters sit at $25.87 and $39.11, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Rotary Drill Operators, Oil and Gas. The self-employed are excluded, so $67,890 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $67,890 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else