Occupation / job
Service Unit 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
Service Unit Operators, Oil and Gas pays $58,160 against $50,020 across all occupations — $678 a month more. Every premium is paid for something: find out whether it is the schooling, the licence, the hours or the risk before you decide you want it.
43,140 people are employed in this work. Big enough for a real market in every major metro, small enough that experience in Service Unit Operators, Oil and Gas is still a distinguishing thing to have.
Extraction work suits people who will go where the deposit is, work a rotation away from home, and treat the safety regime as the actual condition of employment.
No verified preparation time is on file for Service Unit Operators, Oil and Gas. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
From $47,480 to $73,230 is $2,145 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.
At $47,480 — $22.82 an hour — the 25th percentile of this field sits essentially at the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint. Being in the bottom quarter of Service Unit Operators, Oil and Gas still means being paid like the average American worker.
Avoid it if you cannot relocate to where the deposit is, or if a downturn in the commodity cycle would leave you stranded.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 43,140 people employed as Service Unit Operators, Oil and Gas; 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 1.5x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $58,160 as where you might be after years in Service Unit Operators, Oil and Gas, and $47,480 as where you would start.
In cash terms the middle half of Service Unit Operators, Oil and Gas runs $47,480 to $73,230 — $25,750 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $58,160.
Between $47,480 and $73,230 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $58,160. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $15,070; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $25,750.
$15,070 separates $58,160 from the $73,230 top quarter, while only $10,680 separates it from $47,480. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Service Unit Operators, 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 Service Unit Operators, Oil and Gas is $27.96 an hour. The quarters sit at $22.82 and $35.20, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $58,160 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.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $58,160 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