Computer Numerically Controlled Tool Operators 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 Computer Numerically Controlled Tool Operators ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $42,710. 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

The occupation employed 176,950 people in May 2024, 0.11% of every job BLS counted. Ohio is the largest employer at 22,980 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 31.3% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Ohio, whose location quotient of 3.62 says this work is 3.62 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $71,160, which is 1.9 times the $37,160 at the 10th, a difference of $34,000 annually. Because the mean wage ($52,900) sits above the median ($49,970), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts Ohio first at 22,980 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, Washington would lead at $104,120. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Computer Numerically Controlled Tool Operators stands number 178 by employment and number 519 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 9% more than its group median, and it supplies 2.0% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 24 of the 48 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $49,970, 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 9,580 jobs, 5.4% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 283 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $44,550 a year, against $92,140 in Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median Computer Numerically Controlled Tool Operators paycheck, gross, is $1,922 every two weeks on an annual $49,970, which is $4,164 a month and $961 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($42,710) to the 75th ($60,980) is worth $18,270 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Gross is a starting point, not a budget: the paycheck calculator nets it down by state, an offer comparison lives in the salary calculator, and the raise vs inflation calculator separates a real raise from a nominal one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $54,967 would sit between the median ($49,970) and the 75th percentile ($60,980), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $42,710, is $7,260 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

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Grinding, Lapping, Polishing, and Buffing Machine Tool Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic, Slaughterers and Meat Packers, Extruding and Drawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic, Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing, Food Processing Workers, All Other, Extruding, Forming, Pressing, and Compacting Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.