Occupation / job
Extruding and Drawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic
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
At $47,720 against $50,020, Extruding and Drawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic sits $1.10 an hour under the typical American job. A gap that small is not a reason to choose it or to rule it out; the spread and the entry cost are where the real decision is.
60,840 people are employed as Extruding and Drawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic. At that scale every large metro has a real market, and the difference between a good year and a bad one is usually which employer you are at rather than whether anyone is hiring.
This work suits people who like setting a machine up properly and then producing consistently, which is a different skill from making one good part.
How long it takes to become one of the 60,840 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
The middle half runs $40,450 to $56,840 — $1,365 a month between the quarters, a 1.4x ratio. Spreads this narrow are usually set by a grade or a scale, so the negotiation you are imagining probably is not available.
A quarter of Extruding and Drawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic earn less than $40,450, $9,570 off the $50,020 national midpoint — $19.44 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 could not move should the plant go, because these jobs are concentrated where the plants are.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 60,840 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, $47,720 is a genuinely representative number for Extruding and Drawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic and the main variable left is where you live.
Put in money rather than ratios: $40,450 at the 25th percentile, $47,720 at the midpoint, $56,840 at the 75th. $16,390 separates the quarter of Extruding and Drawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Between $40,450 and $56,840 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $47,720. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $9,120; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $16,390.
From $47,720 it is $7,270 down to the bottom quarter and $9,120 up to the top. The upper half of the range is the longer one, which is the ordinary shape for work where experience compounds.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Extruding and Drawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic is $22.94 an hour. The quarters sit at $19.44 and $27.32, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Extruding and Drawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic. The self-employed are excluded, so $47,720 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $47,720 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