Occupation / job
Roustabouts, 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
Roustabouts, Oil and Gas pays $46,960 where the typical job pays $50,020 — $1.47 an hour apart. That is close enough to average that the interesting numbers on this page are the percentiles, not the median.
44,970 people are employed in this work. Big enough for a real market in every major metro, small enough that experience in Roustabouts, Oil and Gas is still a distinguishing thing to have.
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.
We carry no verified training length for Roustabouts, Oil and Gas — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
Between $38,850 and $58,120 there is $19,270, a ratio of 1.5x. Tight distributions are predictable, and predictable cuts both ways: little risk of being badly underpaid, little prospect of doing much better.
A quarter of Roustabouts, Oil and Gas earn under $38,850, which is $11,170 short of the $50,020 national midpoint. Assume you start there and check whether the arithmetic still works.
Avoid it if working a rotation away from home would not be sustainable for the people you live with.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 44,970 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
$38,850 to $58,120 is a 1.5x range. Ranges this tight usually mean the employer set is homogeneous — the same kind of organisation paying the same kind of scale — so the lever you have is geography rather than employer.
In cash terms the middle half of Roustabouts, Oil and Gas runs $38,850 to $58,120 — $19,270 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $46,960.
Between $38,850 and $58,120 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $46,960. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $11,160; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $19,270.
$11,160 separates $46,960 from the $58,120 top quarter, while only $8,110 separates it from $38,850. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Roustabouts, Oil and Gas has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Roustabouts, Oil and Gas is $22.57 an hour. The quarters sit at $18.67 and $27.94, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Roustabouts, Oil and Gas for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $46,960 describes them.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $46,960 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