Machine Feeders and Offbearers 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 Machine Feeders and Offbearers ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $36,020. 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 46,690 Machine Feeders and Offbearers jobs in May 2024, which is 0.03% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in South Dakota, where the location quotient is 5.40, meaning the occupation holds 5.40 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 6,900 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 30.1% of the national total.

Read the ladder as a career path in numbers: $36,020 at the 25th percentile, $39,700 at the middle, $48,220 at the 75th. The full 10-to-90 range runs $25,530, a ratio of 1.8 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

Louisiana posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $50,510, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Machine Feeders and Offbearers stands number 402 by employment and number 710 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Transportation and Material Moving Occupations, the group median wage is $52,310 across 50 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 24% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.3% of the group's 13,645,590 jobs. In 20 of the 43 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $39,700, 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 1,360 jobs, 2.9% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 131 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, Indianapolis-Carmel-Greenwood, IN posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $38,430 a year, against $51,900 in Columbus, OH. 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

The median Machine Feeders and Offbearers paycheck, gross, is $1,527 every two weeks on an annual $39,700, which is $3,308 a month and $763 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($36,020) to the 75th ($48,220) is worth $12,200 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 $43,670 would sit between the median ($39,700) and the 75th percentile ($48,220), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $36,020, is $3,680 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Transportation and Material Moving Occupations

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers, Automotive and Watercraft Service Attendants, Commercial Pilots, Motor Vehicle Operators, All Other, Railroad Conductors and Yardmasters, Crane and Tower Operators. The full directory is on the Careers hub.