The salary statistics of surface mining machine operators and earth drillers are shown in Table 1. The average hourly salary of surface mining machine operators and earth drillers in the United States is shown in Table 2. In the next few tables we compare the average salaries of surface mining machine operators and earth drillers within different industry sectors and in the 50 states of the United States. The surface mining machine operators and earth drillers annual salary statistics are from the national compensation survey conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2022 and published in April 2023 [1].
| Percentile Bracket | Average Annual Salary |
|---|---|
| 10th Percentile Wage | $36,980 |
| 25th Percentile Wage | $42,980 |
| 50th Percentile Wage | $49,590 |
| 75th Percentile Wage | $62,170 |
| 90th Percentile Wage | $79,130 |
Table 1 shows the average annual salary for surface mining machine operators and earth drillers. The average annual salary for the 90th percentile (the top 10 percent of the highest paid) surface mining machine operators and earth drillers is $79,130. The median annual salary (50th percentile) is $49,590. The average annual salary for the bottom 10 percent is $36,980. It is noted that in the United States, the annual salary of the 90th percentile (the top 10 percent of the highest paid) is almost 113% higher than that of the bottom 10 percent.
The table and chart below show the trend of the median salary of surface mining machine operators and earth drillers from 2012 to 2022. Note that there is no salary data for some years between 2012 and 2022.
| Year | Median Salary | Growth | 1-Year Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | $49,590 | 4.48% | 4.48% |
| 2021 | $47,370 | - | - |
The average salaries of surface mining machine operators and earth drillers in 13 major industry sectors are shown in Table 2. We note that the salaries vary considerably within different industry sectors. The highest paying industry sector for surface mining machine operators and earth drillers occupations is the utilities sector with an annual salary $82,990. The lowest paying sector is the real estate and rental and leasing sector (annual salary $40,210).