Occupation / job
Structural Iron and Steel Workers
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
A $62,780 midpoint puts Structural Iron and Steel Workers $12,760 above the $50,020 typical American job — a 26% premium paid for the training, the licence or the conditions. It is not free money and it disappears the moment you stop meeting the requirement.
Employment stands at 68,380. Structural Iron and Steel Workers is common enough to be recruited for continuously and specific enough that the experience travels — the combination that makes changing employer a working pay rise.
The building trades suit people who want to be paid to learn a craft rather than pay to learn a subject, and who can plan around work that stops when the project or the weather does.
We carry no verified training length for Structural Iron and Steel Workers — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
From $49,880 to $82,660 is $2,731 a month, or 1.7x 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 $49,880, $140 more than the $50,020 typical American job and $23.98 an hour. The floor, not the median, is the strongest financial argument for Structural Iron and Steel Workers.
Avoid it if a gap between projects would leave you without income you could not cover.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 68,380 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 1.7x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $62,780 as where you might be after years in Structural Iron and Steel Workers, and $49,880 as where you would start.
In cash terms the middle half of Structural Iron and Steel Workers runs $49,880 to $82,660 — $32,780 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $62,780.
Getting to $82,660, the 75th percentile, is worth $19,880 a year more than the $62,780 midpoint and $32,780 more than the $49,880 a quarter of Structural Iron and Steel Workers settle for.
The climb from $62,780 to $82,660 is $19,880, against $12,900 down to $49,880. Rather more of the range sits above the midpoint than below it, so the realistic upside in Structural Iron and Steel Workers is larger than the realistic downside.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Structural Iron and Steel Workers is $30.18 an hour. The quarters sit at $23.98 and $39.74, 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 Structural Iron and Steel Workers for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $62,780 describes them.
The hourly number on this page is $62,780 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Structural Iron and Steel Workers, 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