Jewelers and Precious Stone and Metal Workers 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 Jewelers and Precious Stone and Metal Workers ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $38,030. 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

BLS counted 23,420 Jewelers and Precious Stone and Metal Workers jobs in May 2024, which is 0.02% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Rhode Island, where the location quotient is 8.24, meaning the occupation holds 8.24 times its national share of local jobs. New York employs the most people outright, 4,750 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 39.4% of the national total.

Read the ladder as a career path in numbers: $38,030 at the 25th percentile, $49,140 at the middle, $63,210 at the 75th. The full 10-to-90 range runs $47,720, a ratio of 2.4 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

The state spread for Jewelers and Precious Stone and Metal Workers runs from the $60,940 median in Virginia down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in New York (4,750 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Jewelers and Precious Stone and Metal Workers stands number 524 by employment and number 543 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% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.3% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 21 of the 47 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $49,140, 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 5,010 jobs, 21.4% 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

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Providence-Warwick, RI-MA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $49,250 a year, against $66,890 in Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA. That is the metro effect in one line: identical job title, materially different pay, decided mostly by which labor market the job sits in.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median Jewelers and Precious Stone and Metal Workers paycheck, gross, is $1,890 every two weeks on an annual $49,140, which is $4,095 a month and $945 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($38,030) to the 75th ($63,210) is worth $25,180 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 $54,054 would sit between the median ($49,140) and the 75th percentile ($63,210), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $38,030, is $11,110 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

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: 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, Tailors, Dressmakers, and Custom Sewers. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.