Paper Goods Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Paper Goods Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders worker at that point in the distribution, so $59,220 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

The occupation employed 96,950 people in May 2024, 0.06% of every job BLS counted. Pennsylvania is the largest employer at 7,720 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 21.7% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Wisconsin, whose location quotient of 3.77 says this work is 3.77 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $68,640, which is 1.9 times the $36,610 at the 10th, a difference of $32,030 annually. Because the mean wage ($51,750) sits above the median ($49,390), 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 Paper Goods Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders runs from the $62,690 median in Louisiana down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in Pennsylvania (7,720 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Paper Goods Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders stands number 278 by employment and number 533 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% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.1% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 17 of the 43 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $49,390, 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 4,970 jobs, 5.1% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 128 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Greensboro-High Point, NC posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $43,000 a year, against $67,380 in Longview-Kelso, WA. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $4,116 a month before tax, $1,900 biweekly, $950 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($43,520) to the 75th ($59,220) is worth $15,700 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 $54,329 would sit between the median ($49,390) and the 75th percentile ($59,220), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $43,520, is $5,870 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: Aircraft Structure, Surfaces, Rigging, and Systems Assemblers, Semiconductor Processing Technicians, Plating Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic, Stationary Engineers and Boiler Operators, Power Plant Operators, Crushing, Grinding, and Polishing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.