Adhesive Bonding Machine Operators and Tenders Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

A percentile marks a point in this occupation's pay distribution: the worker one quarter of the way up the Adhesive Bonding Machine Operators and Tenders ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $36,420. BLS top-codes very high wages ($239,200+ a year, $115.00+ an hour) and marks estimates it cannot publish as n/p.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 12,170 Adhesive Bonding Machine Operators and Tenders jobs in May 2024, which is 0.01% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Oregon, where the location quotient is 6.48, meaning the occupation holds 6.48 times its national share of local jobs. North Carolina employs the most people outright, 1,200 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 25.9% of the national total.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $29,130 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($60,420) is 1.9 times the 10th percentile ($31,290), a gap of $29,130 a year. The mean of $45,670 sitting above the median of $45,210 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 39 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is Rhode Island at $61,420; the jobs leader is North Carolina:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Adhesive Bonding Machine Operators and Tenders stands number 660 by employment and number 636 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Production Occupations, the group median wage is $46,020 across 105 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 2% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.1% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 21 of the 39 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $45,210, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA is the largest metro employer with 550 jobs, 4.5% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $43,050 a year, against $43,050 in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $3,768 a month before tax, $1,739 biweekly, $869 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($36,420) to the 75th ($52,060) is worth $15,640 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $49,731 would sit between the median ($45,210) and the 75th percentile ($52,060), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $36,420, is $8,790 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Production Occupations

Sibling occupations in Production Occupations: Food Batchmakers, Helpers--Production Workers, Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Molding, Coremaking, and Casting Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic, Printing Press Operators, Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.