The Datum Report

Occupation 8132 · Process, plant and machine operatives

Mining and quarry workers and related operatives

Half of full-time mining and quarry workers and related operatives in the UK earn more than £38,301 a year, and half earn less.

Quarry workers erect supports in underground workings, set and detonate explosives to loosen rocks and set up and operate drilling equipment to extract coal and other minerals from the ground, and operate machinery to wash, crush or separate stone and ores.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic entry requirements. Training is typically provided on-the-job. NVQs/ SVQs in land drilling operations at level 2 and processing operations (extractive industries) at level 3 are available. There is a minimum age limit of 18 for underground work.

What the work involves

• inspects blasting area, drills shot holes, inserts explosives and detonates charges to loosen large pieces of rock, coal or ore
• assembles drilling and cutting tools, operates controls to start machines and to regulate the speed and pressure of cutting and drilling
• erects timber or metal supports to shore up tunnel and assists tunnel miner with the excavation of vertical shafts and underground tunnels
• operates heading, ripping and cutting-loading machines to remove material from working face and monitors conveyor carrying away loose material
• conveys goods and materials to and from the workface, loads and unloads mine cars and transfers materials from underground and surface conveyors to bunkers, tubs and rail trucks
• operates agitators/vibrators to separate minerals and ensures that screened, filtered, crushed and separated material is discharged to appropriate chutes or conveyors
• performs other mining and quarrying tasks not elsewhere classified including digging clay from open pits, operating high-pressure hoses to wash china clay from open pit faces and otherwise assisting miners

Also called

Coal miner · Derrickman (oil wells) · Diamond driller (well sinking) · Plant operator (quarry) · Quarry operative

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for mining and quarry workers and related operatives, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 3 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Energy plant operatives · Paper and wood machine operatives · Plant and machine operatives n.e.c. · Printing machine assistants · Water and sewerage plant operatives