2026 Edition · An annual reference on what work pays

Bus Drivers, Transit and Intercity

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ metropolitan area. Estimated employment 19,770.

Data released May 2025 BLS OEWS · SOC 53-3052
Fig. 1 — The wage rule

Where you sit in the distribution

Drag the marker, or type a figure
$78,130 · 50th
$56,56010th
$64,59025th
$78,13050th
$84,70075th
$84,70090th

That is the medianhalf of people in this occupation in New York earn more.

Table 1 — Adjusted

$78,130 in New York buys what $69,400 buys across the country as a whole.

New York's regional price parity is 112.6 — well above the national average — a dollar here buys noticeably less than in the US as a whole. Adjusted figures for other metros are in the nearby-metros table below.

Table 2 — Nearby metros

The same job, elsewhere in New York

Adjusted figures apply each metro's regional price parity, so the columns are directly comparable.

Metro areaMedianAdjustedRPPvs. New York
New York This page$78,130$69,400112.6
Rochester$62,420$64,30097.0−7.3%
Watertown$60,620$69,10087.7−0.4%
Kiryas Joel$58,490$53,500109.4−23.0%
Albany$52,000$52,20099.6−24.8%
Syracuse$51,210$53,50095.7−22.9%
Buffalo$50,220$52,40095.8−24.5%

Price parity and difference against New York are in the full table on wider screens.

Fig. 2 — Five-year trend

Nominal against real

The same median, once as published and once restated in 2025 dollars.

60k70k80k90k100k 20212022202320242025
Nominal, as published Real, in 2025 dollars US$ thousands

Published pay rose 0.1% over the five years to 2025. Adjusted for inflation it fell 15.8% — prices rose faster than pay since 2021. The two lines meet at the right edge by construction, since 2025 is the base year.

Sources

How this page was made

Wage data
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 release. Public domain.
Price parity
Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Price Parities, 2024.
Inflation
Real figures deflate by CPI-U annual averages (BLS, all items, US city average).
Employment
19,770 employed in this occupation in the metro (BLS estimate; excludes the self-employed).
Occupation
SOC 53-3052, Bus Drivers, Transit and Intercity. Mapped to our taxonomy as bus-drivers-transit-and-intercity.

Percentiles are reported exactly as released and are never interpolated between published values. We take no payment from employers, recruiters or anyone else for how any figure is presented.