Occupation / job
Underground Mining Machine Operators, All Other
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 midpoint of $70,130 against $50,020 means Underground Mining Machine Operators, All Other pays $1,675 a month more than the typical American job. At that distance the entry requirement is the real subject, because it is what the premium is buying.
Employment as Underground Mining Machine Operators, All Other stands at 3,180. That is small enough that your local market may have a dozen posts in total; mobility will matter more to your earnings than seniority does.
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 Underground Mining Machine Operators, All Other — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
$51,670 to $83,120 — 1.6x, or $2,620 a month between the quarters. An unremarkable spread, which means the useful planning number for Underground Mining Machine Operators, All Other is the bottom of it rather than the middle.
The bottom quarter of Underground Mining Machine Operators, All Other still clears $51,670 — $1,650 above the $50,020 typical job. A high floor is the most valuable and least advertised property an occupation can have.
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. 3,180 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
At 1.6x between $51,670 and $83,120 this is a normally shaped occupation. $70,130 is what the middle of Underground Mining Machine Operators, All Other earns after the years it takes to get there, which is not the same as what it offers you now.
In cash terms the middle half of Underground Mining Machine Operators, All Other runs $51,670 to $83,120 — $31,450 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $70,130.
Between $51,670 and $83,120 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $70,130. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $12,990; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $31,450.
Getting from $51,670 to the $70,130 midpoint is $18,460; getting from there to $83,120 is only $12,990. The hard part of the range is the lower half, which is also the half a newcomer starts in.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Underground Mining Machine Operators, All Other is $33.71 an hour. The quarters sit at $24.84 and $39.96, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $70,130 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 $70,130 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