Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing 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 ($30,920) to the 90th ($54,340). 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 63,350 jobs nationally, Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing make up 0.04% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: Michigan alone holds 4,810 of those jobs, the top three states hold 20.0%, and the deepest concentration sits in South Dakota (location quotient 3.30, 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: $23,420 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($54,340) is 1.8 times the 10th percentile ($30,920), a gap of $23,420 a year. The mean of $42,290 sitting above the median of $40,440 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 Michigan first at 4,810 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, Washington would lead at $50,170. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing stands number 348 by employment and number 698 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 12% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.7% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 26 of the 47 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $40,440, 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

Grand Rapids-Wyoming-Kentwood, MI is the largest metro employer with 2,830 jobs, 4.5% of the national total. Employment rank and pay rank are different lists: the second table re-sorts metros with at least 500 jobs in this occupation by mean pay, the floor keeping a handful of workers from posing as a market.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $37,090 a year, against $49,630 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. That is the metro effect in one line: identical job title, materially different pay, decided mostly by which labor market the job sits in.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $3,370 a month before tax, $1,555 biweekly, $778 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($36,260) to the 75th ($47,650) is worth $11,390 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 $44,484 would sit between the median ($40,440) and the 75th percentile ($47,650), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $36,260, is $4,180 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: Ophthalmic Laboratory Technicians, Fiberglass Laminators and Fabricators, Chemical Plant and System Operators, Tailors, Dressmakers, and Custom Sewers, Furnace, Kiln, Oven, Drier, and Kettle Operators and Tenders, Plant and System Operators, All Other. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.