Texas Ranks #1, But High‑Pay States Like Washington Also Stand Out for Railroad Brake, Signal, and Switch Operators in 2026

Across the top states for railroad brake, signal, and switch operators and locomotive firers, LaborCove’s rankings show that no single metric fully explains how locations compare. Texas holds the #1 LaborCove Geography Score while offering the largest reported state employment count among the top geographies and a median salary above the national level. Washington ranks #2 with a higher median salary than Texas but a smaller reported employment count. Illinois and California both appear in the top five, with Illinois showing a higher median salary while California has a larger reported employment count. Nationally, the occupation has a median annual salary of $68,840 and employment of 12,400, with a projected national employment growth rate of 1.0%. Several top‑ranked states have median salaries above this national benchmark, including Washington, New York, Maryland, Iowa, Illinois, Georgia, and Texas. In contrast, California and Missouri rank in the LaborCove top ten with median salaries below the national median, illustrating that strong overall rankings do not require a state’s pay level to exceed the national figure. The LaborCove Geography Score produces a ranking from Texas through Georgia that blends salary, employment, and other underlying factors in the scoring system. However, the ordering of states shows that the highest salary does not automatically translate into the highest ranking, and the largest employment count does not always coincide with the highest salary. Users can therefore treat the rankings as a structured comparison tool rather than as a simple salary or employment list.

At the national level, railroad brake, signal, and switch operators and locomotive firers have a reported median annual salary of $68,840 and employment of 12,400. The national projected employment growth rate for the occupation is 1.0%, which serves as general context but does not indicate how any individual state or metro might change. Within this national backdrop, several top‑ranked states show median salaries above the national value. Washington, New York, Maryland, Iowa, Illinois, Georgia, and Texas all exceed the $68,840 national median, while California and Missouri fall below it. These differences highlight how the same occupation can have meaningfully different pay levels from state to state. Employment counts at the state level also vary relative to the national total. Texas, California, and Illinois each report more than 1,000 employed workers in this occupation, while New York, Iowa, Maryland, Missouri, Georgia, and Washington report smaller employment counts. These variations provide scale for how concentrated the occupation is in specific states compared with the national figure.

Texas ranks #1 in the LaborCove Geography Score for railroad brake, signal, and switch operators and locomotive firers, with a score of 72.52. Its median salary of $71,580 stands above the national median of $68,840, and its reported employment count of 1,650 is the largest among the listed top geographies. Compared with other high‑employment states in the ranking, Texas combines a strong Geography Score with substantial scale. California reports 1,340 employed workers and Illinois reports 1,210, both below Texas on employment, while all three states appear in the LaborCove top five. Texas also has a higher median salary than California but a lower median salary than Illinois. The combination of the #1 LaborCove ranking, the largest reported state employment count among the supplied geographies, and a median salary above the national level makes Texas numerically distinct in this dataset. However, the Geography Score itself is an aggregate measure, so it should be interpreted as one structured indicator rather than a simple reflection of salary or employment alone.

Washington offers the highest median salary among the top ten states, at $85,140, and holds the #2 LaborCove ranking with a Geography Score of 67.54. Washington’s median salary is higher than both the national median of $68,840 and Texas’s median salary of $71,580. Its reported employment count of 740 is smaller than Texas’s 1,650 and California’s 1,340 but larger than New York’s 220. Illinois, ranked #3 with a Geography Score of 65.55, has a median salary of $76,290, which exceeds both the national median and Texas’s median salary. Illinois’s reported employment count of 1,210 is smaller than Texas’s but larger than Washington’s, placing it among the higher‑employment states in the top ten. New York, at rank #6 with a Geography Score of 57.83, also offers a relatively high median salary of $83,530, exceeding the national median, Texas, and Illinois. Its reported employment count of 220 is smaller than those of Texas, California, Illinois, Washington, Missouri, Iowa, and Georgia. These patterns show that several states with higher salaries than Texas nonetheless rank below it in the LaborCove Geography Score, underscoring that the highest pay does not automatically correspond to the top ranking.

California ranks #5 with a LaborCove Geography Score of 58.31 and reports 1,340 employed railroad brake, signal, and switch operators and locomotive firers. This employment count is smaller than Texas’s 1,650 but larger than the reported counts for Illinois, Washington, New York, Maryland, Iowa, Missouri, and Georgia. California’s median salary of $58,770 is lower than the national median and lower than the median salaries in all other top‑ten states. Missouri, ranked #9 with a Geography Score of 48.35, has a median salary of $67,110 and a reported employment count of 730. Its employment count is smaller than Texas’s 1,650, California’s 1,340, and Illinois’s 1,210, but larger than New York’s 220, Maryland’s 100, Iowa’s 220, and Georgia’s 250. Missouri’s median salary is below the national median and below the salaries in all other listed states except California. Colorado appears at rank #4 with a Geography Score of 61.77 and a median salary of $76,140. Its salary is higher than the national median and higher than the median salaries in Texas, California, Missouri, and Georgia. However, Colorado’s employment count is not supplied, so no direct employment comparison can be made for this state.

Georgia rounds out the top ten at rank #10 with a LaborCove Geography Score of 47.32. Its median salary of $75,540 is higher than the national median and higher than the median salaries in Texas, California, and Missouri. Georgia’s reported employment count of 250 is smaller than those in Texas, California, Illinois, Washington, Missouri, and Iowa, but larger than New York’s 220 and Maryland’s 100. Maryland and Iowa occupy the #7 and #8 ranking positions with Geography Scores of 49.64 and 49.18, respectively. Maryland’s median salary is $79,180 and Iowa’s is $80,910, both exceeding the national median. Each state reports relatively small employment counts—100 in Maryland and 220 in Iowa—compared with Texas, California, Illinois, Washington, and Missouri. Taken together, these mid‑ranking states demonstrate that relatively high salaries can occur in locations with smaller reported employment counts and lower Geography Scores than Texas, Washington, or Illinois. The LaborCove rankings therefore give a way to view trade‑offs among salary levels, employment scale, and overall Geography Score when comparing potential states.

LaborCove builds these rankings from authoritative labor‑market data combined with its LaborCove Geography Score methodology. For each state with sufficient data, LaborCove incorporates measures such as median annual salary, employment counts, and other factors into a single Geography Score and ranking. All projected employment growth information in this article is national for the occupation as a whole, not for any specific state. No state‑level or metro‑level projected growth rates are used or implied. Geographic comparisons in this Insight rely only on the supplied salary, employment, and Geography Score evidence. Because LaborCove’s rankings aggregate multiple inputs, they should be considered alongside individual priorities such as preferred region, role fit, or employer type. The data describes how states compare on measured labor‑market characteristics; it does not predict any individual’s chances of being hired or succeeding in a given location.