The 10 best-paying blue-collar jobs

It's like blue-eyed crooner Frank Sinatra once said: "It's nice work if you can get it."

Though the U.S. economy remains strong, factory jobs are being outsourced, a slowing housing market has killed construction jobs over the past several months, and manufacturing employment has been on a downward trend in recent years.

Yet there's still good money to be made in the labor and service industries, commonly referred to as blue-collar jobs. For instance, if you could overcome the long odds of landing a job as an elevator installer and repairer, the gig could pay more than $63,000 a year.

Though some people might not immediately associate blue-collar occupations with higher-level formal education, some of these managers and supervisors must have extensive knowledge of business or sciences to perform the tasks of, for example, a power-plant operator or an agricultural manager.

Power-plant operators earn a median annual wage of $55,000, or $26.44 an hour. These workers control, operate or maintain machinery to generate electric power, keeping your home or business juiced.

Farm, ranch and other agricultural managers make an annual wage of $52,070, or $25.03 an hour, to supervise farming activities, get their hands dirty on occasion and handle some of the business and marketing. They perform all these tasks with the owner's consent, of course.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' definition of blue-collar occupations had included precision production, craft and repair workers; machine operators and inspectors; transportation and moving employees; handlers, equipment cleaners and helpers; and service workers.
According to the bureau, the annual wages have been calculated by multiplying the hourly mean wage by 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. For those occupations where there is not an hourly mean wage published, the annual wage has been directly calculated from reported survey data.

Top 10 blue-collar jobsRank Occupation Annual pay Search

1


Elevator installers and repairers


$63,620


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2


Locomotive engineers


$57,990


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3


Electrical and electronics repairers


$57,400


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4


Railroad conductors and yard masters


$55,530


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5


Power-plant operators


$55,000


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6


Ship engineers


$54,820


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7


Construction and mining supervisors


$53,850


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8


Gas-plant operators


$53,670


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9


Farm managers


$52,070


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10


Transportation inspectors


$50,370
By Forbes.com