Occupation / job
Computer Numerically Controlled Tool Operators
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
$50,690 against a $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — $670 apart. Computer Numerically Controlled Tool Operators pays what the average job pays, so the decision has to be made on the work, the entry cost and the spread rather than on the wage.
National employment is 169,450. At that scale hiring is continuous, the market rate is well established, and your leverage comes from being credibly willing to go somewhere else.
This work suits people who can hold quality steady through repetition, which is a real skill and one that machines have not entirely taken.
How long it takes to become one of the 169,450 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
Between $44,930 and $61,760 there is $16,830, a ratio of 1.4x. Tight distributions are predictable, and predictable cuts both ways: little risk of being badly underpaid, little prospect of doing much better.
At $44,930 — $21.60 an hour — the 25th percentile of this field sits essentially at the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint. Being in the bottom quarter of Computer Numerically Controlled Tool Operators still means being paid like the average American worker.
Avoid it if you need a career shape; many of these roles are flat by design.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 169,450 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
Top quarter to bottom quarter is 1.4x. In a band that narrow, $50,690 is a genuinely representative number for Computer Numerically Controlled Tool Operators and the main variable left is where you live.
The middle half of this field earns between $44,930 and $61,760. That is $16,830 of range, with $50,690 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Between $44,930 and $61,760 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $50,690. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $11,070; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $16,830.
From $50,690 the drop to $44,930 is $5,760 and the climb to $61,760 is $11,070. When the upper half of the range is that much longer, the average is pulled well above the median — which is exactly why this site publishes the median.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $24.37 at the midpoint for Computer Numerically Controlled Tool Operators, $21.60 at the 25th percentile and $29.69 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $50,690 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $50,690 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else