Excavating and Loading Machine and Dragline Operators, Surface Mining
What the pay figures show
- North Dakota comes first for this job on every measure. $90,380 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $81,187 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For excavating and loading machine and dragline operators, surface mining, North Dakota's $90,380 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $81,187. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$57,430
People doing it
34,480
Highest paid
$90,380
ND
Best off, really
$81,187
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$41,600
Highest tenth
$82,400
Lowest, really
$38,113
DE
States with data
49
National average
$59,930
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Where you do this job matters enormously. The best state pays roughly twice what the worst does. Prices alone cannot explain a gap that size. Level everything out and the range still runs $38,113 to $81,187.
- Just 34,480 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 49 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $57,430. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, North Dakota pays most.
- Geographic dispersion in excavating and loading machine and dragline operators, surface mining is unusually wide: the top state's median is approximately double the bottom's, a spread that price differentials cannot account for. The real-terms range, after tax and price deflation, still runs $38,113 to $81,187 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 34,480 are employed nationally in excavating and loading machine and dragline operators, surface mining — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for excavating and loading machine and dragline operators, surface mining in 49 jurisdictions, short of the full set. ⚠️ Absence reflects estimate suppression — small samples or disclosure rules — rather than absence of employment, so the state comparison above is over the published subset.
Pay band: Excavating and Loading Machine and Dragline Operators, Surface Mining
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $41,600 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $57,430 |
| Top tenth earn over | $82,400 |
| This salary | $57,430 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Excavating and Loading Machine and Dragline Operators, Surface Mining
The national median for this job
$57,430around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $41,600 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $57,430 |
| Top tenth | $82,400 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Excavating and Loading Machine and Dragline Operators, Surface Mining, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $46,170 |
|---|---|
| Highest | North Dakota · $90,380 |
| Spread | $44,210 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $49,000 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $50,424 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND | $90,380 | $71,909 | $81,187 |
| WY | $78,230 | $63,865 | $70,299 |
| NM | $76,350 | $60,119 | $66,514 |
| IL | $80,600 | $61,687 | $62,402 |
| AK | $74,680 | $61,367 | $60,333 |
| MT | $65,850 | $52,731 | $58,431 |
| NJ | $80,310 | $62,402 | $57,311 |
| WV | $61,330 | $49,536 | $55,180 |
| NV | $63,810 | $53,451 | $55,116 |
| MA | $76,070 | $58,862 | $54,382 |
| IN | $61,910 | $50,128 | $54,378 |
| IA | $59,390 | $48,255 | $54,361 |
| OH | $58,240 | $48,091 | $52,379 |
| NE | $58,370 | $47,128 | $52,147 |
| CA | $74,500 | $58,353 | $51,832 |
| ID | $58,670 | $47,065 | $51,479 |
| WI | $58,280 | $46,989 | $50,473 |
| NC | $58,620 | $47,451 | $50,405 |
| MI | $59,040 | $47,360 | $50,285 |
| CT | $65,710 | $52,114 | $50,260 |
| MO | $56,760 | $46,056 | $50,191 |
| VT | $59,790 | $48,386 | $50,070 |
| LA | $53,510 | $43,956 | $49,755 |
| WA | $64,270 | $53,821 | $49,576 |
| MN | $61,260 | $48,760 | $49,544 |
| AZ | $60,310 | $49,534 | $48,992 |
| CO | $61,020 | $49,233 | $48,562 |
| RI | $59,590 | $48,246 | $47,574 |
| VA | $59,480 | $47,313 | $46,961 |
| NH | $58,540 | $49,217 | $46,720 |
| SD | $48,250 | $40,949 | $46,483 |
| SC | $52,580 | $43,257 | $46,425 |
| ME | $55,890 | $44,635 | $45,970 |
| UT | $54,330 | $43,416 | $45,701 |
| TN | $49,500 | $41,953 | $45,348 |
| MS | $48,490 | $39,294 | $45,015 |
| OR | $61,280 | $46,607 | $44,506 |
| MD | $57,610 | $46,097 | $44,339 |
| AR | $46,170 | $38,028 | $43,959 |
| PA | $52,350 | $42,636 | $43,729 |
| OK | $47,100 | $38,406 | $43,502 |
| KS | $48,950 | $39,068 | $43,426 |
| KY | $47,780 | $39,017 | $43,127 |
| NY | $58,120 | $46,338 | $43,055 |
| AL | $47,770 | $38,517 | $42,811 |
| TX | $49,000 | $41,552 | $42,759 |
| FL | $51,990 | $43,954 | $42,487 |
| GA | $50,290 | $40,677 | $42,066 |
| DE | $46,900 | $37,828 | $38,113 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for this job, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $57,430 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for this job, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is North Dakota, at $71,909.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for this job. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits Delaware, on $38,113.
- All wage figures for excavating and loading machine and dragline operators, surface mining are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $57,430. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- Retained-pay figures for excavating and loading machine and dragline operators, surface mining model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $71,909, which leads in North Dakota.
- Real-terms results for excavating and loading machine and dragline operators, surface mining rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; Delaware anchors the distribution at $38,113. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.