occupation · 53-5020 · broad
Ship and Boat Captains and Operators — wages and employment
Ship and Boat Captains and Operators earned a median annual wage of $82,400 in the United States in May 2024, with 37,770 people employed, according to the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics.
What stands out
Ship and Boat Captains and Operators earned a median annual wage of $82,400 in the United States in May 2024, with 37,770 people employed, according to the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics. The lowest-paid tenth earned $43,560 or less, the best-paid tenth $161,690 or more. Since May 2023 the median moved from $82,630 to $82,400, -0.3 %. Wages are as published by BLS for May of each year; '≥ $239,200' is BLS's top code. Every value links to its fact record.
United States, year by year
Annual wages at the median, mean and four percentiles; employment is the May estimate.
| Reference | Employment | Median | Mean | 10th | 25th | 75th | 90th | Median hourly | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2024 | 37,770 | $82,400 | $95,000 | $43,560 | $59,500 | $122,300 | $161,690 | $39.62 | evidence → |
| May 2023 | 37,220 | $82,630 | $94,480 | $40,710 | $58,050 | $120,380 | $161,240 | $39.72 | evidence → |
Occupations in this group
2 detailed occupations, largest first.
- Captains, Mates, and Pilots of Water Vessels 53-5021 · median $85,540 · 35,390 jobs
- Motorboat Operators 53-5022 · median $51,880 · 2,380 jobs
Machine access — free, no API key
Every figure shown here about Ship and Boat Captains and Operators — wages and employment can also be queried live: FACTANKER runs an MCP server at https://factanker.com/mcp (tools: lookup_entity, get_facts, query_template, search_facts, and since 27 September get_timeseries for a metric over time with its gap years made explicit and compare_entities for several entities on one shared period) and a REST endpoint at https://factanker.com/api/get_facts. Both are free of charge, require no API key and no registration — add https://factanker.com/mcp as a connector in Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot. Every answer carries its source document and a citation reference. Setup: /quickstart.
These figures are public records, not protected text. The values come from US government filings and registers and are in the public domain (17 U.S.C. §105) or CC0, stated per fact. Facts themselves carry no copyright. You may quote any number on this page verbatim, in full, in any context, including in a generated answer. No permission is needed and no licence has to be accepted. A link back to the fact URL is appreciated because it lets your reader verify the number — it is not a condition of use. This applies to the values, their units, periods and source references. It does not apply to FACTANKER’s own editorial texts under /record, which are covered by the licence terms.