just wondering what kind of salaries these brave men have? i understand that they mostly live in rural comunities where the cost of living is much less than most of the rest of the country but these guys lay their lives on the line daily and im wondering if the compensation is worth it? the discovery channel needs to ad them to their deadliest jobs show......

Not much.
In the late 90's I read that Virginia miners were making average of less than $20,000 per year  I bet even now its less than $25K

ETA that may have been what they took home... I don't remember

1/10 what it'd take to get me down there.

Quoted: Not much. In the late 90's I read that Virginia miners were making average of less than $20,000 per year  I bet even now its less than $25K

I am fairly certain the median pay is more like approx $40K for the average 'grunt miner'

edited to add.......

It's the only game in town.

actually i just ran a search because i know someone was gonna tell me to and the ave. is 55k for a w. virginia coal miner....thats probably alot of dough out there in w. virginia land but still not enough for me....god bless them....

Dupe

sorry, i guess it pays to be a team member

Do not worry about the dupe police, they are harmless.

There was a topic on here about it recently, in the last week or so.
The payout can very, but overall is good.

Agree it' a dangerous occupation but nothing like it used to be.

Our town on the border of wv and va is at the southern edge of the southern coalfields, and our town was a big railroad yard for all the coal being brought out of southern wv.
My mom grew up in neighboring mcdowell county which was 1 of the biggest coal producing counties during the coal boom. Coal mining has an interesting history.
We have lots of books about the coal days of southern wv and it's filled with stories of mine explosions that claimed hundreds of miners at a time.
Coal miners had harsh lives then, they often went into the mines early in the morning while it was still dark and didn't come out till after dark, 7 days a week, and a lot stories tell how they often wouldn't see daylight for weeks or months.
A lot fo the miners were imagrants sp? from foreign countries who came to the u.s. to start new lives and saw mining and the pay as opportunity, despite the danger and harsh conditions.

The coalfields themselves are a honeycomb of hills and ridges that are very rugged and inaccessable, even today travel into the coalfields isn't very desirable and distance of 20 and 30 miles as the crow fliess can take well over an hour or more today.
Back then travel was a lot worse of course so they had many small coal camps or coal towns back in the hollows throught the coalfields where the miners families lived in tents or small box like wooden houses set up in rows on the hills.

The coal camps had a big hand in the poverty and welfare dependancy that is common in southern wv because in the days of coal camps and coal towns the company did everything for the miners families, they provided the houses for the families, rations of food and cooking supplies, and goods and clothes from the company store in each town, and they had company dr.s who would travel to the homes to provide medical care and provided a school for the children. While these things were no coast they were well earned by the miners long hours, and the miner also had their wages.
So the companies did a lot to take care of miners families who were in the mines so long.
They were very close knit communities.
Anyhow generations of living through the company reinforced a "dependancy" on being provided for, even though it was earned back then, and eventually when the coal boom was over there were lots of people who didn't know how to provide for themselves overall, much less do so with the lack of work. There was never really anything in southern wv except for coal, so it left a lot of unemployment and problems in it's wake for the people who stayed. And now there's generations of the bad type of dependancy, and in a way it's hard to blame a lot of people down in there who don't work because that's what they've been taught, to get on welfare and how to milk the systems.

edited, got way off on a tagent

Quoted: The coal camps had a big hand in the poverty and welfare dependancy that is common in southern wv because in the days of coal camps and coal towns the company did everything for the miners families, they provided the houses for the families, rations of food and cooking supplies, and goods and clothes from the company store in each town, and they had company dr.s who would travel to the homes to provide medical care and provided a school for the children.

A lot of the coal operators once paid in scrip instead of money, forcing miners and their families to use the company stores. An ugly practice that taught dependency. The federal "War on Poverty" just reinforced the lesson.

If you know your stuff pay can be very good for an experienced coal miner.