Mixing and Blending Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders 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 Mixing and Blending Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $39,800. 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

The occupation employed 100,840 people in May 2024, 0.07% of every job BLS counted. Texas is the largest employer at 9,150 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 23.7% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Iowa, whose location quotient of 2.27 says this work is 2.27 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $67,570, which is 1.9 times the $35,000 at the 10th, a difference of $32,570 annually. Because the mean wage ($49,990) sits above the median ($47,680), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

New Jersey posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $58,850, and Texas the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Mixing and Blending Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders stands number 268 by employment and number 576 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 4% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.2% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 23 of the 49 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $47,680, 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 5,550 jobs, 5.5% 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, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $30,740 a year, against $65,310 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, 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

Budget arithmetic on the median: $3,973 a month before tax, $1,834 biweekly, $917 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($39,800) to the 75th ($57,940) is worth $18,140 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $52,448 would sit between the median ($47,680) and the 75th percentile ($57,940), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $39,800, is $7,880 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: Metal-Refining Furnace Operators and Tenders, Metal Workers and Plastic Workers, All Other, 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. The full directory is on the Careers hub.