Material Handler job description
147 verified openings in Material Handler
Freight moves between the dock, staging lanes, production, and racking mostly by hand and by pallet jack, and that is the material handler's day. BLS files the work under laborers and freight, stock, and material movers, hand, one of the largest occupations in the country at 2,940,300 jobs in its 2025 count, paying a median of $40,240 in May 2025, the bottom tenth under $31,270 and the top tenth over $55,140. BLS keeps no separate line for either title, so the warehouse associate page here draws the same figures.
Core Duties and Responsibilities
Keeping the equipment storage areas in order so inventory stays protected comes first, then reading a work order or taking spoken instructions on what needs moving, then moving it, between storage, production, docks, delivery vehicles, ships, and containers. The supplemental list adds bracing, padding, and strapping to stop a load shifting, sorting cargo, tagging containers, and recording units handled on a daily sheet. BLS calls the work physically demanding and repetitive and reports one of the highest injury and illness rates of any occupation for this group.
Common Skills and Technologies
Most of the day runs on other people's timing, which is why Coordination comes before every other skill here, with listening, reading, and speaking right behind it. Nothing in the technology record was built for the floor: SAP, Oracle Database, and Microsoft Excel are what employers name, and inventory management and industrial control software sit further down. The tools that decide the shift are still the pallet jack and the hand truck.
Education, Training, and Career Path
Job Zone Two, and the education answers are blunt: 89 percent said hiring takes a high school diploma or GED, 11 percent less, and almost nobody answers college. No formal credential is required to start and training runs a month or less. The move that pays is a forklift certification, which OSHA 1910.178 leaves the employer to issue, and which puts a handler on equipment where the median runs about $6,000 a year higher.
Sources: O*NET 30.0, 53-7062.00 Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand, https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/53-7062.00. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, 53-7062, https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm. BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Hand Laborers and Material Movers, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/hand-laborers-and-material-movers.htm.