Occupation / job
Wellhead Pumpers
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 $69,960 against $50,020 means Wellhead Pumpers pays $1,661 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.
17,990 people work as Wellhead Pumpers. That is enough for a functioning national market and not enough for a functioning local one — in most metros this is a few employers rather than a field you can move around inside.
These roles suit people who prefer to be busy physically rather than sat still, and who value being able to find the same job in any city.
How long it takes to become one of the 17,990 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 $52,330 to $82,200 is $2,489 a month, or 1.6x 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.
The 25th percentile is $52,330, $2,310 above the $50,020 typical American job. A floor above the national midpoint is rare, and it is worth more than an equivalent amount of upside.
Avoid it if you need pay that rises with time served; in much of this category it does not.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 17,990 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 $52,330 and $82,200 this is a normally shaped occupation. $69,960 is what the middle of Wellhead Pumpers earns after the years it takes to get there, which is not the same as what it offers you now.
Put in money rather than ratios: $52,330 at the 25th percentile, $69,960 at the midpoint, $82,200 at the 75th. $29,870 separates the quarter of Wellhead Pumpers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $82,200. Reaching it from the $69,960 midpoint is $12,240 a year; reaching it from the $52,330 that the bottom quarter of Wellhead Pumpers earn is $29,870.
The midpoint sits high inside its own range: $17,630 above the $52,330 bottom quarter but only $12,240 below the $82,200 top quarter. Most of the distance in Wellhead Pumpers is spent climbing out of the bottom, and once you are past the middle there is not much further to go.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Wellhead Pumpers is $33.63 an hour. The quarters sit at $25.15 and $39.51, 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 Wellhead Pumpers. The self-employed are excluded, so $69,960 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Wellhead Pumpers, the hourly figure is $69,960 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else