Crane Operator Pay in Arkansas: What the Federal Wage Data Shows

Statewide figures for Arkansas

In the May 2023 OEWS estimates, the most recent statewide Arkansas figures we could confirm on bls.gov, about 820 people worked as crane and tower operators in the state. Their mean hourly wage was $23.37, which BLS converts to a mean annual wage of $48,610 by assuming 2,080 paid hours a year. A year earlier, in May 2022, BLS estimated 790 jobs and a mean of $21.59 an hour ($44,900 a year).

One more number from the same table is worth knowing. Arkansas had a location quotient of 2.32 for this occupation in May 2023, which means crane operator jobs made up more than twice the share of total employment here that they do nationally. Only Louisiana and North Dakota ranked higher on that measure. Steel, river terminals, timber, utilities and heavy industrial work help explain why a mostly rural state carries so many of these jobs. (The federal rules those operators work under are summarized in the Arkansas requirements guide.)

Northwest Arkansas as a metro example

BLS publishes metro-area releases for some Arkansas regions. For the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers metro, the May 2023 release listed about 70 crane and tower operators with a mean of $26.40 an hour ($54,920 a year). The May 2024 release showed roughly 40 jobs and a mean of $25.75 an hour, around $53,500 at full-time hours.

Read metro numbers carefully. When an occupation employs only a few dozen people in an area, the estimate can swing sharply from one year to the next because of sampling, not because the market changed. We did not find a published crane-operator figure for the Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway metro in the releases we could verify, so we have left it out rather than guess.

How Arkansas compares with the national picture

Nationally, the May 2025 OEWS release counted about 42,890 crane and tower operators, with a mean hourly wage of $34.68 (a mean annual wage of $72,130) and a median of $32.73 an hour. The Occupational Outlook Handbook reports that median as $68,080 a year, the highest among the material moving machine occupations it groups together.

Arkansas wages sit below those national averages, which is typical for a state with lower living costs and a large share of open-shop work. Keep in mind that the newest national data (2025) is being compared with older Arkansas data (2023); the gap may be different in later releases. For projections, the Handbook expects national employment in the occupation to grow about 4 percent from 2025 to 2035, roughly 1,600 additional jobs on a base near 42,900.

What tends to push an operator's pay up or down

A survey mean blends everyone together: the new boom truck hand and the 25-year lattice boom operator. Individual pay depends on factors like these, and none of them guarantees a number.

• Machine and capacity. Larger and more complex cranes, such as big lattice boom crawlers or tower cranes, generally call for more experience, and the work is priced accordingly. Small boom trucks sit at the other end.
• Credentials. An accredited operator card, plus rigging or signal person cards, widens the set of jobs you can be put on. On many sites it is simply the price of entry.
• Hours and overtime. Annual pay depends heavily on how many hours you actually work. Shutdown and outage work at plants can mean long weeks; wet springs and slow bid seasons can mean short ones.
• Union or open shop. Union scale is set in collective bargaining agreements and usually includes benefit contributions on top of the hourly rate; open-shop pay is set company by company. Compare total compensation, not only the hourly figure.
• Travel and per diem. Jobs at remote plants, pipelines or river sites sometimes add travel pay or per diem. Expense allowances like these are not part of the OEWS wage figure.
• Industry. Construction, crane rental, manufacturing and utilities all employ operators, and each sets pay differently.

Using these numbers sensibly

If you are weighing whether the trade is worth it, the honest takeaway is that experienced operators in Arkansas earn a solid trade wage, and moving to bigger machines or adding credentials tends to open better-paying work. Getting there takes supervised seat time and passing both NCCCO exams; see how to become a crane operator in Arkansas for the path, and the written exam guide for what the first test looks like. Arkansas adds no state license on top, as the certification vs. license page explains.

Our online prep handles the knowledge side of the written exams, self-paced on any device. We make no promise about pay, hiring or exam results. When you are ready, the course list shows the options and the enrollment form reaches an enrollment advisor.