Helpers--Production Workers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($30,060) to the 90th ($52,120). 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 167,490 Helpers--Production Workers jobs in May 2024, which is 0.11% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Arkansas, where the location quotient is 4.49, meaning the occupation holds 4.49 times its national share of local jobs. Texas employs the most people outright, 26,660 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 31.8% of the national total.

One in ten workers in this field earns $30,060 or less, and one in ten earns $52,120 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 1.7 to 1 and the annual gap is $22,060. The mean ($40,080) versus median ($38,220) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 49 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is Vermont at $46,480; the jobs leader is Texas:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Helpers--Production Workers stands number 187 by employment and number 735 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 17% less than its group median, and it supplies 1.9% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 30 of the 49 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $38,220, 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

Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX is the largest metro employer with 7,280 jobs, 4.3% 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, $23,910 a year, against $48,870 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. 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

The median Helpers--Production Workers paycheck, gross, is $1,470 every two weeks on an annual $38,220, which is $3,185 a month and $735 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($34,390) to the 75th ($44,980) is worth $10,590 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 $42,042 would sit between the median ($38,220) and the 75th percentile ($44,980), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $34,390, is $3,830 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 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, Chemical Plant and System Operators. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.