Metal-Refining Furnace Operators and Tenders 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 ($38,760) to the 90th ($80,280). 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

The occupation employed 20,330 people in May 2024, 0.01% of every job BLS counted. Indiana is the largest employer at 3,560 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 39.5% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Indiana, whose location quotient of 8.47 says this work is 8.47 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $80,280, which is 2.1 times the $38,760 at the 10th, a difference of $41,520 annually. Because the mean wage ($57,290) sits above the median ($55,770), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 39 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is Indiana at $75,630; the jobs leader is Indiana:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Metal-Refining Furnace Operators and Tenders stands number 558 by employment and number 462 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 21% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.2% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 13 of the 39 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $55,770, 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

Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN is the largest metro employer with 2,240 jobs, 11.0% 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, Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $54,350 a year, against $79,550 in Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN. 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 $55,770 works out to $4,648 a month before taxes, $2,145 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,072 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($46,550) to the 75th ($65,070) is worth $18,520 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 $61,347 would sit between the median ($55,770) and the 75th percentile ($65,070), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $46,550, is $9,220 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: Cleaning, Washing, and Metal Pickling Equipment Operators and Tenders, Milling and Planing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic, Foundry Mold and Coremakers, Coil Winders, Tapers, and Finishers, Adhesive Bonding Machine Operators and Tenders, Grinding and Polishing Workers, Hand. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.