Time Machine

Hazardous materials removal workers

Name: Hazardous Materials Removal Workers: employment and wages since 1983
Creator: Future History
License: https://futurehistory.earth/terms

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 51,710 US hazardous materials removal workers, with median pay of $49,450 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2003, the May 2025 count is the highest. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 5,000 from 1983, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for hazardous materials removal workers: In-situ remediation technologies, 2010 to 2020. In-situ remediation is generally less labor-intensive per site than excavation-and-disposal, contributing to flat employment growth even as the number of sites receiving attention remained large.

Official statistic: latest count and pay, highest count.Researched context: earliest figure.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 1.5% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

Official statistic

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend. In May 2021 BLS changed how it estimates these counts (a model-based method using three years of survey data) and moved fully to the 2018 occupation codes, so part of a change across 2021 can come from the method rather than the work.

Last updated 11 October 2026.

Cite this page

APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Hazardous materials removal workers: jobs and pay since 1983 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/47-4041

Chicago

Future History. "Hazardous materials removal workers: jobs and pay since 1983." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/47-4041.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_47_4041, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Hazardous materials removal workers: jobs and pay since 1983}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/47-4041}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

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19752000now

2026

Known then as Asbestos Abatement Worker / Hazardous Waste Site Worker (pre-regulatory era, informal titles)

Known then as Asbestos Abatement Worker / Superfund Cleanup Worker (SARA era)

Known then as HAZWOPER-Certified Worker / Hazardous Waste Technician (post-HAZWOPER era)

Known then as Hazardous Materials Removal Workers (BLS SOC 47-4041)

Known today as Hazardous Materials Removal Workers (BLS SOC 47-4041)

Projected to still be called Hazardous Materials Removal Workers (BLS SOC 47-4041)

Data from the May 2025 survey

US Employment

52K

Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic

Report an error

Median Annual Wage

$49,450

≈ $48,182 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic

Report an error

Beat · 1970

The Clean Air Act is signed into law on December 31, 1970, creating the legal foundation for EPA regulation of hazardous air pollutants including asbestos. The EPA is established that same year. Within months, on March 31, 1971, EPA publicly identifies asbestos as a dangerous hazardous pollutant. These two actions set the stage for the 1973 asbestos NESHAP and, ultimately, for an entire new category of environmental remediation labor.

Beat · 1978

The Love Canal crisis in Niagara Falls, New York, becomes the first hazardous waste disaster to reach a national emergency declaration. President Jimmy Carter declares a federal emergency in August 1978. Hooker Chemical had dumped 21,800 tons of industrial waste including dioxin at the site; a neighborhood built on top of it in the 1950s reported miscarriages, birth defects, and chemical seepage in basements. The crisis directly accelerates congressional action that produces CERCLA in 1980. The federal emergency response workers dispatched to Love Canal are among the earliest precursors of what will become the HAZWOPER-trained remediation workforce.

Beat · 1980

President Jimmy Carter signs the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) on December 11, 1980, creating the Superfund program. The law authorizes EPA to respond directly to releases of hazardous substances and establishes an initial $1.6 billion trust fund (from taxes on chemical and petroleum industries) to pay for cleanup. For the first time, the federal government has the authority and the money to hire workers to remediate the most dangerous contaminated sites in the country. The Superfund program will eventually generate the largest sustained demand source for hazardous materials removal workers.

Beat · 1983

EPA publishes the first National Priorities List, identifying 406 contaminated sites requiring formal Superfund remediation. The list will grow to over 1,200 active sites by the late 1990s, and as of 2024 over 1,300 sites have been listed on the NPL. The size and growth of the NPL is the primary structural driver of demand for hazardous materials removal workers, supplemented by state-listed sites that do not reach the NPL threshold.

Beat · 1986

The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) reauthorizes CERCLA and in its Title I mandates that OSHA develop a health and safety standard for hazardous waste cleanup workers. The Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act (AHERA) is enacted the same year, requiring inspection and abatement of asbestos-containing materials in all US public and commercial buildings, not just demolition scenarios. AHERA generates a large one-time demand surge for asbestos abatement workers: every school building in the country must be inspected, and those with friable asbestos must hire accredited abatement contractors. Model Accreditation Plan (MAP) training courses are established, ranging from 32 to 40 hours.

Beat · 1989

OSHA publishes the final HAZWOPER rule (29 CFR 1910.120) on March 6, 1989. This is the foundational regulation that defines the hazardous materials removal worker occupation: it mandates 40 hours of initial training plus 3 days of supervised field experience for workers at uncontrolled hazardous waste sites, and annual 8-hour refresher training to maintain certification. The rule was developed in collaboration with NIOSH, EPA, and the US Coast Guard, and replaces an interim final rule that had been issued to comply with the SARA Title I mandate. The HAZWOPER rule takes effect March 6, 1990.

Beat · 1998

The EPA's Superfund program reaches its 5,000th emergency removal action. Brownfields job training reaches 1,000 participants completing training at its first milestone. The EPA Brownfields program, which will eventually train over 23,400 individuals and place over 17,400 in environmental cleanup careers, begins its role as a workforce pipeline for the hazardous materials removal occupation. EPA-trained Brownfields workers typically earn around $23 per hour (average starting wage over the past five years to 2024), consistent with the BLS median for the broader occupation.

Beat · 2001

The anthrax letter attacks of October 2001 temporarily mobilize a specialized category of hazardous materials removal workers: biological decontamination crews that clean the US Senate Hart Building, the Brentwood Postal Facility in Washington DC, and other affected sites. This episode is a reminder that the occupation spans multiple hazard types, not just chemical and radiological. Emergency response decontamination crews operate under the same HAZWOPER framework as Superfund remediation workers, but with biological rather than chemical or radiological hazards.

Beat · 2024

GAO reports that DOE's Office of Environmental Management (EM), which oversees the nuclear cleanup mission at Hanford, Oak Ridge, and Savannah River, has an 18 percent vacancy rate for mission-critical positions and that 44 percent of its staff will be eligible for retirement by 2030. The DOE nuclear cleanup workforce is a significant and specialized subsector of the broader 47-4041 occupation: nuclear decontamination and decommissioning work requires radiological worker training beyond standard HAZWOPER, and jobs at DOE sites typically pay $60,000 to $80,000 annually. The pending workforce gap at DOE nuclear sites is one of the few structurally bullish demand signals for the occupation over the next decade.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures, ONS ASHE figures (UK pay and jobs) and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

How it began · 1973

On April 6, 1973, the Environmental Protection Agency promulgated the Asbestos National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP), codified at 40 CFR Part 61 Subpart M. That regulation was the moment a new occupation was called into existence by law. Before it, asbestos was routinely torn out, swept up, and discarded by the same construction laborers and demolition crews who handled everything else on a jobsite. The EPA NESHAP changed that: demolition and renovation projects above specified thresholds now required wet methods, sealed containers, approved landfill disposal, and trained personnel. The people who did that work were the first generation of hazardous materials removal workers, though nobody called them that yet. They were asbestos abatement crews, and they were learning on the job because no formal training curriculum yet existed. The regulatory scaffolding came in stages. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act on December 11 -- better known as Superfund -- after Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York became a national crisis. Hooker Chemical had dumped 21,800 tons of industrial waste at that site, and when a neighborhood was built on top of it in the 1950s, groundwater contamination, miscarriages, birth defects, and strange chemical odors began alarming residents. In August 1978, Carter declared a federal emergency at Love Canal, and the first hazardous waste emergency response workers went to work. In 1983, the EPA published its first National Priorities List of 406 Superfund sites requiring formal remediation. By 1986, the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act directed OSHA to write a specific worker-safety standard for cleanup operations. That standard, HAZWOPER (29 CFR 1910.120), was finalized on March 6, 1989 and took effect March 6, 1990. It required 40 hours of initial training, three days of supervised field experience, and annual 8-hour refreshers for workers at uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. For the first time, the people removing hazardous materials from contaminated land and deteriorating buildings had a formal, federally mandated occupational identity. The BLS would not give them their own SOC code until 2000. But the occupation was real a quarter century before that.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace hazardous materials removal workers? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say

Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35
Target year 2035
+1.5%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 47-4041 (Hazardous materials removal workers): 52.7 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 53.5 thousand in 2035, a change of +0.8 thousand (+1.5%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (0.8% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.
Official statisticReport an error

Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for hazardous materials removal workers

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you here Comply with prescribed safety procedures or federal laws…

regulating waste disposal methods.^[2]

Where your edge is

AI is sitting alongside you here Load or unload materials into containers or onto trucks…

, using hoists or forklifts.^[2]

Where your edge is

AI is sitting alongside you here Clean mold-contaminated sites by removing damaged porous…

materials or thoroughly cleaning all contaminated nonporous materials.^[2]

Where your edge is

Tools of the era

How has the work of hazardous materials removal workers changed since 1973?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

Wet-method asbestos removal and basic PPE (half-face respirator, disposable coveralls)
The EPA's 1973 asbestos NESHAP established the basic technique that defined the first generation of hazardous materials removal work: wet the asbestos-containing material with amended water before disturbing it, to suppress fiber release; bag the wet material in sealed plastic; label and transport to an approved landfill. Personal protective equipment in this era was rudimentary by modern standards: half-face air-purifying respirators with HEPA cartridges, disposable Tyvek coveralls, and latex gloves. Negative-air enclosures, critical-barrier plastic sheeting, and full-face supplied-air respirators were not yet universal requirements. Workers in the 1970s and early 1980s were often trained on the job with little formal curriculum; the absence of HAZWOPER meant that safety practices varied widely across contractors.
Effect on the work
The creation of a distinct asbestos abatement workforce in the 1973 to 1986 period represented the initial separation of hazardous removal from general construction labor. Exact workforce counts are unavailable, but the EPA estimated in the early 1980s that there were hundreds of thousands of buildings in the United States containing asbestos-containing materials that would eventually require professional abatement.
Negative-air enclosures, full-face supplied-air respirators, and HAZWOPER training (SARA/AHERA era)
The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 directed OSHA to develop a comprehensive health and safety standard for hazardous waste site workers. The result, HAZWOPER (29 CFR 1910.120), finalized in 1989 and effective March 6, 1990, transformed the occupation from an informal, contractor-dependent practice into a formally credentialed trade. The physical toolkit advanced in parallel: full-face supplied-air respirators replaced half-face APR units for high-exposure scenarios; critical-barrier plastic sheeting systems created sealed asbestos removal enclosures with negative-air-pressure filtration; and Level B and Level C chemical-protective suits became standard for Superfund soil work. The initial training course and mandatory annual refresher defined who could legally do the work. This was the moment the occupation acquired its modern form.
Effect on the work
HAZWOPER directly created a credentialed workforce: workers who had not completed the course and supervised field experience were legally barred from uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. The standard is estimated to have covered hundreds of thousands of workers in cleanup, treatment, and emergency response categories at its promulgation. By 1998, EPA's Brownfields job training program had put about a thousand individuals through cleanup certification training at its first milestone.
Air monitoring instruments, XRF lead analyzers, and computerized site documentation
Through the late 1990s and 2000s, the tools of site assessment and real-time exposure monitoring became more precise and portable. X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analyzers let workers test painted surfaces for lead in seconds rather than sending samples to a laboratory. Photoionization detectors (PIDs) and direct-reading instruments for volatile organic compounds, hydrogen sulfide, and oxygen deficiency became standard pre-entry equipment for confined-space and soil-excavation work. Computerized site documentation systems tracked chain-of-custody for waste containers, real-time air monitoring readings, and daily work logs in digital form, replacing paper manifests. These tools did not reduce the number of workers needed -- regulated procedures still required hand work under personal protective equipment -- but they improved exposure documentation and regulatory compliance. GPS-linked sampling programs let project managers overlay contamination maps with remediation progress.
Effect on the work
Better real-time air monitoring reduced accidental overexposures and improved worker safety records without reducing workforce size. Regulatory compliance documentation costs fell as electronic manifesting replaced multi-part paper forms.
In-situ remediation technologies (soil vapor extraction, permeable reactive barriers, bioremediation injection)
The 2010s saw a significant shift in Superfund remediation strategy, from invasive excavation and off-site disposal toward in-situ treatment: injecting reagents into contaminated groundwater, installing permeable reactive barriers, deploying soil vapor extraction wells. For hazardous materials removal workers, this shift meant less traditional dig-and-haul work and more work installing treatment systems, operating injection equipment, and sampling to confirm cleanup progress. The occupation's physical core did not change, but the mix of tasks expanded to include more instrumentation operation and less pure excavation. DOE nuclear sites continued to require traditional hands-on decontamination work that in-situ methods could not replace.
Effect on the work
In-situ remediation is generally less labor-intensive per site than excavation-and-disposal, contributing to flat employment growth even as the number of sites receiving attention remained large. The DOE nuclear cleanup program sustained employment that would otherwise have declined further.
Remote-sensing drones, robotic sampling platforms, and PFAS remediation techniques (current era)
The 2020s introduced drone-based aerial surveys for large contaminated sites, reducing the need for workers to walk contaminated areas for initial screening. Remote-controlled robotic platforms began assisting in nuclear decontamination, notably at DOE facilities and aging nuclear power plants, allowing workers to stay out of high-radiation zones during reconnaissance and light material handling. The emergence of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) as a new regulated contaminant class created a new remediation demand stream: PFAS contamination at military installations and airports added thousands of sites to the remediation backlog. These are not automated substitutes for the human worker: the dexterous close-quarters work of cutting, bagging, and sealing remains human. But drones and robotics are redefining where human judgment begins, reducing the portion of a site where workers must suit up and enter.

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Hazardous Materials Removal Workers employment and pay by year

On record since1973

Latest US employment51,710 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Latest US median pay$49,450 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Outlook+1.5% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error

View all 26 years of cited US data, each linked to its source

Hazardous Materials Removal Workers in the US: employment and pay by year, with sources
Year	US employment	Annual pay (median unless marked)	Source	Report
1983	5,000	n/a	Est., EPA Superfund History [1] Researched context	Report
1990	18,000	n/a	Est., OSHA HAZWOPER background [2] Researched context	Report
2000	34,070	$28,520	BLS OEWS 2000 [3] Official statistic	Report
2003	36,590	$32,710	BLS OEWS May 2003 [4] Official statistic	Report
2004	38,550	$33,320	BLS OEWS May 2004 [4] Official statistic	Report
2005	38,260	$33,690	BLS OEWS May 2005 [4] Official statistic	Report
2006	38,740	$35,450	BLS OEWS May 2006 [4] Official statistic	Report
2007	39,530	$36,330	BLS OEWS May 2007 [4] Official statistic	Report
2008	42,500	$37,310	BLS OEWS May 2008 [4] Official statistic	Report
2009	41,100	$37,280	BLS OEWS May 2009 [4] Official statistic	Report
2010	36,910	$37,600	BLS OEWS May 2010 [4] Official statistic	Report
2011	36,270	$38,120	BLS OEWS May 2011 [4] Official statistic	Report
2012	37,440	$37,590	BLS OEWS May 2012 [4] Official statistic	Report
2013	40,290	$37,930	BLS OEWS May 2013 [4] Official statistic	Report
2014	42,250	$38,520	BLS OEWS May 2014 [4] Official statistic	Report
2015	42,560	$39,690	BLS OEWS May 2015 [4] Official statistic	Report
2016	44,280	$40,640	BLS OEWS May 2016 [4] Official statistic	Report
2017	43,260	$41,400	BLS OEWS May 2017 [4] Official statistic	Report
2018	44,000	$42,030	BLS OEWS May 2018 [4] Official statistic	Report
2019	44,240	$43,900	BLS OEWS May 2019 [4] Official statistic	Report
2020	44,010	$45,270	BLS OEWS May 2020 [4] Official statistic	Report
2021	44,240	$46,300	BLS OEWS May 2021 [4] Official statistic	Report
2022	46,780	$46,690	BLS OEWS May 2022 [4] Official statistic	Report
2023	49,960	$47,280	BLS OEWS May 2023 [4] Official statistic	Report
2024	50,570	$48,490	BLS OEWS May 2024 [4] Official statistic	Report
2025	51,710	$49,450	BLS OEWS May 2025 [4] Official statistic	Report

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Wet-method asbestos removal and basic PPE (half-face respirator, disposable coveralls) (1973 to 1986)

Negative-air enclosures, full-face supplied-air respirators, and HAZWOPER training (SARA/AHERA era) (1986 to 1995)

Air monitoring instruments, XRF lead analyzers, and computerized site documentation (1995 to 2010)

In-situ remediation technologies (soil vapor extraction, permeable reactive barriers, bioremediation injection) (2010 to 2020)

Remote-sensing drones, robotic sampling platforms, and PFAS remediation techniques (current era) (2020 to present)

Hazardous Materials Removal Workers employment and pay by year

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