Pressers, Textile, Garment, and Related Materials 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 ($24,960) to the 90th ($41,410). 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

The occupation employed 26,830 people in May 2024, 0.02% of every job BLS counted. California is the largest employer at 4,330 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 34.0% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Connecticut, whose location quotient of 3.71 says this work is 3.71 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

One in ten workers in this field earns $24,960 or less, and one in ten earns $41,410 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 1.7 to 1 and the annual gap is $16,450. The mean ($33,370) versus median ($33,880) comparison shows an unusually symmetric ladder in this occupation.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts California first at 4,330 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, Washington would lead at $38,260. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Pressers, Textile, Garment, and Related Materials stands number 500 by employment and number 808 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 26% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.3% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 18 of the 46 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $33,880, 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

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 2,260 jobs, 8.4% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 104 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, Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $25,050 a year, against $43,120 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. 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

The median annual wage of $33,880 works out to $2,823 a month before taxes, $1,303 per biweekly paycheck, and $652 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($29,060) to the 75th ($36,830) is worth $7,770 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 $37,268 would sit between the median ($33,880) and the 75th percentile ($36,830), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $29,060, is $4,820 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: Gas Plant Operators, Extruding and Forming Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Synthetic and Glass Fibers, Heat Treating Equipment Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic, Textile Knitting and Weaving Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Textile, Apparel, and Furnishings Workers, All Other, Furniture Finishers. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.