2026 Edition · An annual reference on what work pays

Industrial Truck and Tractor Operators

Columbus, OH metropolitan area. Estimated employment 11,910.

Data released May 2025 BLS OEWS · SOC 53-7051
Fig. 1 — The wage rule

Where you sit in the distribution

Drag the marker, or type a figure
$46,780 · 50th
$39,01010th
$45,01025th
$46,78050th
$61,54075th
$66,90090th

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

Table 1 — Adjusted

$46,780 in Columbus buys what $49,000 buys across the country as a whole.

Columbus's regional price parity is 95.5 — below the national average, so a dollar here goes further than the nominal figure suggests. Adjusted figures for other metros are in the nearby-metros table below.

Table 2 — Nearby metros

The same job, elsewhere in Ohio

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

Metro areaMedianAdjustedRPPvs. Columbus
Cincinnati$49,000$51,40095.4+4.9%
Sandusky$47,170$52,80089.3+7.8%
Columbus This page$46,780$49,00095.5
Cleveland$46,090$49,10093.9+0.1%
Canton$45,930$51,40089.4+4.8%
Akron$45,590$48,80093.4−0.4%
Dayton$45,120$48,70092.7−0.7%
Toledo$45,100$49,30091.5+0.6%

Price parity and difference against Columbus 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.

35k40k45k50k 20212022202320242025
Nominal, as published Real, in 2025 dollars US$ thousands

Published pay rose 18.8% over the five years to 2025. Adjusted for inflation it is roughly flat — people in this occupation in Columbus earn about what they earned in 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
11,910 employed in this occupation in the metro (BLS estimate; excludes the self-employed).
Occupation
SOC 53-7051, Industrial Truck and Tractor Operators. Mapped to our taxonomy as industrial-truck-and-tractor-operators.

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.