Packaging and Filling Machine 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 ($31,890) to the 90th ($58,910). 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

With 383,860 jobs nationally, Packaging and Filling Machine Operators and Tenders make up 0.25% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 45,330 of those jobs, the top three states hold 24.6%, and the deepest concentration sits in Wisconsin (location quotient 2.27, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $27,020 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($58,910) is 1.8 times the 10th percentile ($31,890), a gap of $27,020 a year. The mean of $43,630 sitting above the median of $40,900 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts California first at 45,330 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, Wyoming would lead at $48,530. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Packaging and Filling Machine Operators and Tenders stands number 96 by employment and number 689 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 11% less than its group median, and it supplies 4.4% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 26 of the 50 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $40,900, 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 21,500 jobs, 5.6% of the national total. The first table ranks metros by employment; the second ranks them by mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs in the occupation, because a three-person metro can top a pay table by accident.

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, $30,060 a year, against $62,530 in Fort Collins-Loveland, CO. A gap that size between two metro labor markets is why the same occupation title can fund two very different budgets in two different cities.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $3,408 a month before tax, $1,573 biweekly, $787 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($36,250) to the 75th ($48,440) is worth $12,190 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 $44,990 would sit between the median ($40,900) and the 75th percentile ($48,440), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $36,250, is $4,650 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

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Prepress Technicians and Workers, Rolling Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic, Upholsterers, Tire Builders, Textile Winding, Twisting, and Drawing Out Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal-Refining Furnace Operators and Tenders. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.