Hard physical work on a drilling or well service rig, two weeks on and two weeks off. No degree needed, and the risk is real.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
The median pay is about $58,160 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $38,940 at the lower end to about $97,560 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
Up to 1 year, on the usual route, and you are paid while you train from the first day.
From nothing up to about $9,600, depending on the route, for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
No. There is no license to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Limited demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$58,160
Bottom tenth
$38,940
Top tenth
$97,560
These figures are for service unit operators in oil and gas, one of several rig jobs the survey counts separately: the median is $58,160 a year and the bottom tenth earn $38,940 or less. Derrick operators have a median of $58,620 a year and rotary drill operators $67,890. A slow year can mean no work at all.
$22.83 an hour
25% of service unit operators earn this or less, before overtime
The survey publishes no separate starting rate, and its figures leave out overtime. Rig hands often work 12-hour shifts for 14 days straight, and federal law pays overtime at time and a half for hours over 40 in a week. A quiet year can put them out of work.
$67,890 a year
Median for rotary drill operators in oil and gas, 2025
Offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico often run three weeks on and three weeks off. The driller, the person who actually runs the rig floor, has the highest median of the three rig jobs on this page.
Roughly, all in
Nothing to $9,600
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
There is no tuition at all here and you are paid from your first shift. The low end is a company that pays for your safety tickets, the hydrogen sulfide awareness course, first aid and the rig orientation, and issues the fire resistant coveralls, boots and hard hat. The high end is paying for those tickets yourself at $300 to $1,000, buying your own gear at $300 to $600, and adding a commercial driver's license at $3,000 to $8,000 to reach the truck and pump work. The real cost that is not in these numbers is moving yourself to the oilfield, which usually means Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma or the Gulf coast.
This is one of the few careers on this site with no tuition at all. You are paid from your first shift, and the main cost is getting yourself to the oilfield, which usually means Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma or the Gulf coast.
Rotation schedules
Typically 14 days on and 14 off onshore, or 21 and 21 offshore. Half the year at home is the real benefit.
Camp, food and travel
Remote jobs cover housing and meals, and often a travel allowance to the site.
Overtime and bonuses
Long shifts mean heavy overtime, and some companies pay well-completion or safety bonuses on top.
Health insurance and a retirement plan
Standard at the large drilling contractors, patchier at small service companies.
No student debt
You start earning at eighteen while your friends are borrowing for tuition.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Hired for your willingness first, trained on the rig, promoted by proving you can be trusted with expensive equipment.
High school diploma
Grade 12
Usual but not always required. Shop, welding and math classes help. So does anything that proves you show up on time.
Safety tickets and a medical
Days to weeks
A rig safety orientation, hydrogen sulfide awareness, first aid and a drug test. Some are done in a day, some the employer pays for on hire.
Get hired as a roustabout or floorhand
Immediate
The bottom of the crew: moving pipe, cleaning, handling tools, doing what the driller says. Go to where the rigs are and apply in person.
Work up the crew
3 to 8 years
Floorhand to motorhand to derrickhand to driller. Each step is more skill, more responsibility and more money, learned on the job.
Well control certification
Before you run the floor
Drillers and supervisors need certified well control training, for example the WellSharp program run by IADC (the International Association of Drilling Contractors), retaken on a regular cycle.
Shop and welding
Fixing things with what is on the rig is a daily skill.
Math
Volumes, pressures and mud weights are simple arithmetic done correctly under time pressure.
Physical education
Say what you like, the job is lifting, climbing and pulling for twelve hours.
Physics
Pressure, load and leverage explain most of what the rig is doing.
There is no license to be a rig hand. What is regulated is the workplace. Onshore, federal workplace safety rules cover the site and the contractor has to train you on the hazards before you start. Offshore, BSEE (the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement) regulates safety and environmental protection on the outer continental shelf, and requires operators to run a formal safety and environmental management system. Industry bodies add their own standards on top: rig orientation programs and well control certifications are effectively required by employers even though no law names them.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Well control certification
Required before you can be a driller or supervisor. The single most valuable card in the wallet.
CDL (commercial driver's license)
Opens up vacuum trucks, pump trucks and hot oil work, which are less brutal on the body.
Welding
A rig welder is a separate role, and the skill works anywhere if the oilfield goes quiet.
Crane and rigging certification
Offshore and on big land rigs, certified crane operators and riggers are always short.
Offshore survival training
Helicopter underwater escape and sea survival. Required before you set foot on an offshore platform.
A reliable vehicle
Rigs are an hour or more from the nearest town and nobody is coming to get you.
Somewhere cheap to live
Rent in a boom town can eat the pay rise that brought you there.
A clean record
Drug testing is constant and random, and a failed test ends the job on the spot.
Money discipline
This career pays in waves. The people who last are the ones who save during the boom.
Very few people spend thirty years on a rig floor. The body gives out and the work moves with the price of oil. The usual exits are sideways into the same industry: well site supervisor, safety officer, equipment sales, wireline or coiled tubing, or an office job with the drilling contractor. The rig experience is the credential for all of it. Others take the welding, crane or commercial driving skills straight into construction, mining or trucking, which is why those tickets are worth getting while someone else is paying.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Twelve hours, days or nights, in whatever weather West Texas or North Dakota is having. Pre-shift safety meeting, then the work: making up and breaking out drill pipe, handling tongs and slips, mixing mud, hosing down the floor, greasing everything. Noise so constant you talk in hand signals. Lunch out of a cooler. The rig never stops, so the other crew takes over the second you step off. Then a trailer or a camp bed, sleep, and do it again for thirteen more days.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, killing 11 workers and spilling oil for months. The federal offshore regulator was broken up, and on October 1, 2011 the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement took over offshore safety as a separate agency.
Hydrogen sulfide, the gas that comes up with sour crude, smells like rotten eggs at low levels. At about 100 parts per million it wipes out your sense of smell within 2 to 15 minutes, so the warning disappears exactly when it matters. That is why hands carry gas monitors.
Federal projections expect slower than average growth for service unit operators from 2025 to 2035, but still about 3,800 openings a year as people leave the work.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Mining, oil and gas first, then the rest of the field. See every career in skilled trades.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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