Can Amtrak Really Be That Top Heavy

Buried in a 2023 article in Progressive Railroading about diversity of employment at Amtrak is an interesting statistic unrelated to diversity: 82 percent of males at the passenger rail company are in management.

With 80 percent of Amtrak’s employees being male and approximately 19,000 total employees at that time, that works out to 71.8 percent of the company in management.

That seemingly improbable level of management is far beyond that of other railroad companies or most companies in general.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) puts the average number of managerial workers for all rail transportation workers at 4 percent, of which Amtrak is likely a large component.

Progressive Railroading’s definition of managerial positions might vary significantly from BLS’s, but 71.8 percent still seems like a lot.

In a story about management layoffs, the freight rail carrier CSX reportedly had 4,500 management positions out of somewhere in the range of 10,000 in 2017, putting their management ratio at a somewhat more reasonable 45 percent.

There is an ongoing question about Amtrak’s finances. The passenger train service regularly needs subsidies from the federal government to maintain operations. Certain less popular routes are heavily subsidized by the more popular ones like the D.C. to New York route, which regularly costs over $100 for a one-way, 3+ hour ride—sometimes more expensive than a plane flight of the same route. A 5+ hour train ride from Kansas City to Saint Louis might be $32.

Around 97 percent of the miles driven by Amtrak trains are on tracks owned by other railroads like CSX. So the passenger service doesn’t incur many costs for track maintenance but does pay those other lines for track access.

But those track access payments aren’t much. Previous estimates in 2009 put the total at $115.4 million or 3 percent of total operating costs. That’s less than the access revenue Amtrak gets from other lines paying them for track access— $261 million in 2023 or 4.8 percent of operating costs. Employment costs are easily the largest expense, with salaries and benefits paid representing 49.7 percent of operating costs and 90 percent of ticket revenue.

Many train lines besides Amtrak rely on local subsidies, and Amtrak regularly contradicts accusations that it should be profitable.