Engine and Other Machine Assemblers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Engine and Other Machine Assemblers worker at that point in the distribution, so $70,050 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

With 38,420 jobs nationally, Engine and Other Machine Assemblers make up 0.02% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: Indiana alone holds 5,730 of those jobs, the top three states hold 38.4%, and the deepest concentration sits in Indiana (location quotient 7.22, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

One in ten workers in this field earns $37,950 or less, and one in ten earns $74,300 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.0 to 1 and the annual gap is $36,350. The mean ($56,040) versus median ($52,540) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts Indiana first at 5,730 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, North Carolina would lead at $75,560. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Engine and Other Machine Assemblers stands number 435 by employment and number 483 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 14% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.4% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 11 of the 36 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $52,540, 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

Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI is the largest metro employer with 3,040 jobs, 7.9% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 42 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, Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $47,280 a year, against $53,120 in Grand Rapids-Wyoming-Kentwood, MI. 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

As a household number, $52,540 a year is $4,378 a month gross, $2,021 every two weeks, $1,010 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($42,790) to the 75th ($70,050) is worth $27,260 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $4,378 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $57,794 would sit between the median ($52,540) and the 75th percentile ($70,050), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $42,790, is $9,750 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: Fiberglass Laminators and Fabricators, Chemical Plant and System Operators, Tailors, Dressmakers, and Custom Sewers, Furnace, Kiln, Oven, Drier, and Kettle Operators and Tenders, Plant and System Operators, All Other, Gas Plant Operators. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.