Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders Salary and Pay
How much do Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders make?
Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders pay a median of $42,730 a year in the BLS May 2024 survey, with a mean of $44,140 across 19,500 counted jobs. Half of all workers in the occupation earn between $36,610 and $48,680.
Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders salary data without the self-reported noise: BLS surveyed the employers, and this page prints the ladder, the states, and the metros exactly as the survey published them.
Updated November 5, 2026
Salary converter for this occupation
Every level in the picker is a published BLS figure for Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders, not a national average. Annual-to-hourly conversions divide by 2,080 hours, the survey's full-time year; top-coded levels use $239,200, the floor BLS prints, so the true figure is higher.
The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)
| Pay level | Annual wage | Hourly wage |
|---|---|---|
| 10th percentile | $32,390 | $15.57 |
| 25th percentile | $36,610 | $17.60 |
| Median (50th) | $42,730 | $20.54 |
| 75th percentile | $48,680 | $23.40 |
| 90th percentile | $60,070 | $28.88 |
The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($32,390) to the 90th ($60,070). BLS suppresses cells that fail its reliability rules (n/p here) and caps the highest wages at $239,200+ a year or $115.00+ an hour; in this ladder that top code appears at the very top rows only.
Employment and concentration
BLS counted 19,500 Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying 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 Iowa, where the location quotient is 4.17, meaning the occupation holds 4.17 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 1,780 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 22.4% of the national total.
Read the ladder as a career path in numbers: $36,610 at the 25th percentile, $42,730 at the middle, $48,680 at the 75th. The full 10-to-90 range runs $27,680, a ratio of 1.9 to 1. Where a specific job offer lands on that range says more about the role's level than the occupation's headline median does.
Pay by state
Sorted by employment, the table below puts California first at 1,780 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, Colorado would lead at $59,990. Both orderings are printed in one table:
| State | Employment | Jobs per 1,000 | Location quotient | Mean annual | Median annual |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| California | 1,780 | 0.1 | 0.78 | $45,860 | $45,140 |
| Texas | 1,680 | 0.1 | 0.96 | $37,940 | $37,070 |
| Minnesota | 900 | 0.3 | 2.44 | $50,150 | $47,850 |
| Michigan | 850 | 0.2 | 1.53 | $43,970 | $43,770 |
| Iowa | 820 | 0.5 | 4.17 | $44,990 | $45,570 |
| New Jersey | 790 | 0.2 | 1.48 | $39,220 | $37,330 |
| North Carolina | 760 | 0.2 | 1.23 | $52,850 | $51,810 |
| Tennessee | 700 | 0.2 | 1.68 | $45,590 | $45,070 |
| Missouri | 670 | 0.2 | 1.81 | $45,080 | $45,150 |
| Indiana | 660 | 0.2 | 1.63 | $44,550 | $45,550 |
| Wisconsin | 610 | 0.2 | 1.65 | $48,430 | $49,160 |
| Ohio | 590 | 0.1 | 0.85 | $43,240 | $42,810 |
| Virginia | 490 | 0.1 | 0.95 | $50,090 | $43,690 |
| Georgia | 440 | 0.1 | 0.72 | $39,520 | $35,510 |
| Oklahoma | 440 | 0.3 | 2.05 | $35,070 | $36,490 |
| Colorado | 420 | 0.1 | 1.15 | $56,800 | $59,990 |
| Florida | 390 | 0.0 | 0.31 | $38,070 | $36,500 |
| Kansas | 390 | 0.3 | 2.13 | $43,290 | $42,450 |
| Pennsylvania | 390 | 0.1 | 0.51 | $37,680 | $33,530 |
| Kentucky | 370 | 0.2 | 1.46 | $43,590 | $42,970 |
| Nebraska | 370 | 0.4 | 2.88 | $42,590 | $41,430 |
| Oregon | 340 | 0.2 | 1.36 | $45,860 | $44,300 |
| Idaho | 330 | 0.4 | 3.06 | $41,500 | $40,040 |
| South Carolina | 320 | 0.1 | 1.10 | $47,510 | $43,650 |
| Washington | 320 | 0.1 | 0.72 | $45,120 | $44,150 |
| Arkansas | 240 | 0.2 | 1.44 | $39,420 | $39,430 |
| Massachusetts | 230 | 0.1 | 0.50 | $47,070 | $47,160 |
| Nevada | 210 | 0.1 | 1.10 | $45,780 | $47,030 |
| Maryland | 160 | 0.1 | 0.46 | $49,410 | $53,940 |
| Illinois | 150 | 0.0 | 0.19 | $47,150 | $41,310 |
| Maine | 150 | 0.2 | 1.80 | $48,660 | $48,590 |
| Utah | 150 | 0.1 | 0.71 | $40,730 | $40,500 |
| South Dakota | 130 | 0.3 | 2.22 | $42,840 | $43,630 |
| Hawaii | 120 | 0.2 | 1.58 | $41,140 | $42,070 |
| Vermont | 120 | 0.4 | 3.08 | $43,680 | $39,670 |
| New Mexico | 100 | 0.1 | 0.89 | $36,910 | $35,000 |
| Arizona | 90 | 0.0 | 0.23 | $42,030 | $39,400 |
| Louisiana | 80 | 0.0 | 0.33 | $36,470 | $36,720 |
| Connecticut | 70 | 0.0 | 0.33 | $43,090 | $42,420 |
| Montana | 70 | 0.1 | 1.07 | $49,280 | $47,320 |
| North Dakota | 30 | 0.1 | 0.60 | $54,490 | $52,080 |
| New York | n/p | n/p | n/p | $39,990 | $36,190 |
| Rhode Island | n/p | n/p | n/p | $47,310 | $43,240 |
The occupation in context
Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders stands number 568 by employment and number 665 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 7% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.2% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 24 of the 43 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $42,730, 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
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX is the largest metro employer with 400 jobs, 2.1% of the national total. Employment rank and pay rank are different lists: the second table re-sorts metros with at least 500 jobs in this occupation by mean pay, the floor keeping a handful of workers from posing as a market.
Largest metro employers
| Metropolitan area | Employment | Mean annual | Median annual |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 400 | $41,050 | $41,600 |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 380 | $36,820 | $35,940 |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI | 320 | $48,820 | $46,630 |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 300 | $46,000 | $43,900 |
| Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin, TN | 290 | $49,770 | $49,410 |
| St. Louis, MO-IL | 290 | $45,830 | $46,060 |
| Omaha, NE-IA | 270 | $42,590 | $41,430 |
| Grand Rapids-Wyoming-Kentwood, MI | 260 | $47,720 | $46,610 |
| Knoxville, TN | 260 | $40,410 | $37,610 |
| Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI | 240 | $40,510 | $38,380 |
What the median pay looks like as a budget
The median Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders paycheck, gross, is $1,643 every two weeks on an annual $42,730, which is $3,561 a month and $822 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($36,610) to the 75th ($48,680) is worth $12,070 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 $47,003 would sit between the median ($42,730) and the 75th percentile ($48,680), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $36,610, is $6,120 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: Dental Laboratory Technicians, Aircraft Structure, Surfaces, Rigging, and Systems Assemblers, Semiconductor Processing Technicians, Plating Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic, Stationary Engineers and Boiler Operators, Power Plant Operators. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.
Frequently asked questions
How much do Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders make?
The median annual wage is $42,730 and the mean is $44,140 in the BLS OEWS May 2024 estimates. The middle half of workers earn between $36,610 and $48,680 a year.
Which state pays Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders the most?
By median annual wage, Colorado leads the state table at $59,990, based on 420 jobs in that state. By mean wage and by headcount the leaders can differ, so the state table on this page shows all three measures side by side.
How many Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders are there in the United States?
BLS counted 19,500 wage and salary workers in this occupation in May 2024, 0.01% of all U.S. employment in the survey. The largest state employer is California with 1,780 jobs.
What do the OEWS percentiles mean for Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders?
They mark points in this occupation's pay distribution. One worker in ten earns $32,390 or less and one in ten earns $60,070 or more; the median, $42,730, is the wage of the worker exactly in the middle of the 19,500 counted jobs.