What a heavy equipment operator earns, by metro

A heavy equipment operator in Kahului-Wailuku has a median wage of $124,990. In Ponce the median is $27,770. That is a 4.5-fold difference for the same job title, which is unusually wide even by the standards of a country this large — and it means a national average for this role is close to meaningless.

What the percentile band tells you

Ten per cent of heavy equipment operators earn below $42,190 and ten per cent above $101,090 — a 2.4× band. The upside from median to 90th percentile is 69%, which is a normal amount of room for experience and specialisation to matter. An offer below the 25th percentile is worth questioning; one above the 75th is worth taking seriously.

Why the range is 4.5× wide

The top of the table is spread across several states rather than concentrated in one, which points away from a pure cost-of-living story. Where a role pays 4.5× more in one market than another without a single expensive state dominating, the usual cause is local demand density — a few metros where the industry clusters and employers compete for the same small pool. The heavy equipment operator concentration table further down shows where that is happening.

Highest paying metros

Lowest paying metros

West North Dakota nonmetropolitan area is the cluster

West North Dakota nonmetropolitan area has 8.44× the national concentration of heavy equipment operators — the densest market in the country for this role, with 2,270 employed locally. Pay there is $65,320, which does not put it near the top of the pay table. Concentration and compensation are different things — a dense market is easier to get hired in and easier to move around within, but the competition that makes it dense also caps what employers need to offer.

Where the role is most concentrated

Largest employers by metro

Current openings

About this data

Figures come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics programme, May 2025 release, SOC code 47-2073. OEWS surveys employers, so it reports what is actually paid rather than what job advertisements claim, and it excludes the self-employed. Estimates cover 526 of 528 metropolitan areas — near-complete coverage, which means the ranges above are reliable rather than drawn from a handful of markets. Read the methodology.