Occupation / job
Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
A $48,250 median against $50,020 across all occupations puts Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders within $147 a month of the exact middle of the American labour market. Nothing in the headline number argues either way.
158,740 people are employed as Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders. At that size there is a real ladder and enough churn that experience can be sold to a competitor rather than only accumulated where you are.
These roles suit people who want a fixed site, a known task and a shift that ends, and who would rather be reliable than promoted.
How long it takes to become one of the 158,740 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.
Who should not do this
A quarter of Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders earn under $40,590 and a quarter over $59,680 — 1.5x, or $19,090 apart. Narrow spreads usually mean a pay schedule, which is stability bought at the price of upside.
A quarter of Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders earn less than $40,590, $9,430 off the $50,020 national midpoint — $19.51 an hour. The floor here is close enough to ordinary that the case against this work, if there is one, is not financial.
Avoid it if you would be unable to move should the plant close, or if repetitive work would grind you down.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 158,740 people employed as Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
Top quarter to bottom quarter is 1.5x. In a band that narrow, $48,250 is a genuinely representative number for Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders and the main variable left is where you live.
In cash terms the middle half of Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders runs $40,590 to $59,680 — $19,090 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $48,250.
Between $40,590 and $59,680 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $48,250. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $11,430; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $19,090.
$11,430 separates $48,250 from the $59,680 top quarter, while only $7,660 separates it from $40,590. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $23.19 at the midpoint for Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, $19.51 at the 25th percentile and $28.69 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders. The self-employed are excluded, so $48,250 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
The hourly number on this page is $48,250 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else