Multiple Machine Tool Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Multiple Machine Tool Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic offer sit among all 129,850 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

With 129,850 jobs nationally, Multiple Machine Tool Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic make up 0.08% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: Ohio alone holds 13,670 of those jobs, the top three states hold 27.2%, and the deepest concentration sits in Kentucky (location quotient 3.54, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $72,850, which is 2.1 times the $34,130 at the 10th, a difference of $38,720 annually. Because the mean wage ($48,590) sits above the median ($46,060), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

The state spread for Multiple Machine Tool Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic runs from the $73,690 median in West Virginia down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in Ohio (13,670 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Multiple Machine Tool Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic stands number 230 by employment and number 619 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 0% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.5% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 21 of the 46 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $46,060, 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

Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX is the largest metro employer with 5,530 jobs, 4.3% 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, Salt Lake City-Murray, UT posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $40,940 a year, against $65,140 in Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX. 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 $46,060 works out to $3,838 a month before taxes, $1,772 per biweekly paycheck, and $886 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($38,320) to the 75th ($56,220) is worth $17,900 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 $50,666 would sit between the median ($46,060) and the 75th percentile ($56,220), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $38,320, is $7,740 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: Separating, Filtering, Clarifying, Precipitating, and Still Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Structural Metal Fabricators and Fitters, Cutting and Slicing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Sawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Wood, Engine and Other Machine Assemblers, Print Binding and Finishing Workers. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.