Metal Workers and Plastic Workers, All Other 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 ($33,850) to the 90th ($62,800). 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

May 2024 employment stood at 20,270, or 0.01% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 2,490 jobs; the top three states sum to 29.6% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: New Hampshire posts a location quotient of 10.38, 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: $28,950 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($62,800) is 1.9 times the 10th percentile ($33,850), a gap of $28,950 a year. The mean of $45,850 sitting above the median of $42,750 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Washington posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $63,470, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Metal Workers and Plastic Workers, All Other stands number 559 by employment and number 664 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% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.2% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 30 of the 37 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $42,750, 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

Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA is the largest metro employer with 1,160 jobs, 5.7% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $40,270 a year, against $46,680 in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $42,750 works out to $3,562 a month before taxes, $1,644 per biweekly paycheck, and $822 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($36,890) to the 75th ($49,930) is worth $13,040 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 $47,025 would sit between the median ($42,750) and the 75th percentile ($49,930), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $36,890, is $5,860 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

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Computer Numerically Controlled Tool Operators, Cutting, Punching, and Press Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic, Food Batchmakers, Helpers--Production Workers, Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Molding, Coremaking, and Casting Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic. The full directory is on the Careers hub.