Lathe and Turning Machine Tool Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic 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 Lathe and Turning Machine Tool Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $41,180. 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

May 2024 employment stood at 18,970, or 0.01% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 2,330 jobs; the top three states sum to 32.6% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Connecticut posts a location quotient of 3.85, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $29,250 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($65,450) is 1.8 times the 10th percentile ($36,200), a gap of $29,250 a year. The mean of $50,190 sitting above the median of $48,620 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

The state spread for Lathe and Turning Machine Tool Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic runs from the $62,120 median in Maine down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (2,330 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Lathe and Turning Machine Tool Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic stands number 572 by employment and number 558 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 6% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.2% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 21 of the 40 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $48,620, 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 1,100 jobs, 5.8% 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, Knoxville, TN posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $46,550 a year, against $51,110 in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA. 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 annual wage of $48,620 works out to $4,052 a month before taxes, $1,870 per biweekly paycheck, and $935 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($41,180) to the 75th ($58,100) is worth $16,920 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $53,482 would sit between the median ($48,620) and the 75th percentile ($58,100), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $41,180, is $7,440 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 Processing Workers, All Other, Extruding, Forming, Pressing, and Compacting Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Tool and Die Makers, Separating, Filtering, Clarifying, Precipitating, and Still Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Structural Metal Fabricators and Fitters, Cutting and Slicing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.