Chemical Equipment 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 Chemical Equipment Operators and Tenders ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $45,660. 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

With 127,410 jobs nationally, Chemical Equipment Operators and Tenders make up 0.08% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: Texas alone holds 16,190 of those jobs, the top three states hold 25.8%, and the deepest concentration sits in Louisiana (location quotient 5.02, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $51,190 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($88,460) is 2.4 times the 10th percentile ($37,270), a gap of $51,190 a year. The mean of $59,800 sitting above the median of $57,090 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, 47 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is Wyoming at $85,480; the jobs leader is Texas:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Chemical Equipment Operators and Tenders stands number 234 by employment and number 452 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 24% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.5% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 16 of the 47 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $57,090, 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

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 9,310 jobs, 7.3% of the national total. The first table ranks metros by employment; the second ranks them by mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs in the occupation, because a three-person metro can top a pay table by accident.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $37,470 a year, against $90,640 in Baton Rouge, LA. A gap that size between two metro labor markets is why the same occupation title can fund two very different budgets in two different cities.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $4,758 a month before tax, $2,196 biweekly, $1,098 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($45,660) to the 75th ($71,400) is worth $25,740 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 $62,799 would sit between the median ($57,090) and the 75th percentile ($71,400), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $45,660, is $11,430 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: Metal-Refining Furnace Operators and Tenders, Metal Workers and Plastic Workers, All Other, Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders, Lathe and Turning Machine Tool Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic, Ophthalmic Laboratory Technicians, Fiberglass Laminators and Fabricators. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.