Occupation / job
Extruding and Forming Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Synthetic and Glass Fibers
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
Extruding and Forming Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Synthetic and Glass Fibers pays $46,350 where the typical job pays $50,020 — $1.76 an hour apart. That is close enough to average that the interesting numbers on this page are the percentiles, not the median.
Employment as Extruding and Forming Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Synthetic and Glass Fibers is 12,850 nationally. At that size a large city holds a working market and a small one holds almost none, so where you live changes the number of employers available to you by an order of magnitude.
Textile, apparel and furnishings work suits people with genuine hand skill and speed, in a field where domestic production is a smaller part of the market than it once was.
We carry no verified training length for Extruding and Forming Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Synthetic and Glass Fibers — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
The middle half runs $39,360 to $57,280 — $1,493 a month between the quarters, a 1.5x 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 Forming Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Synthetic and Glass Fibers earn under $39,360, which is $10,660 short of the $50,020 national midpoint. Assume you start there and check whether the arithmetic still works.
Avoid it if you need a field with domestic depth; much of this production has moved offshore and stayed there.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 12,850 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
The quarters are $39,360 and $57,280, a ratio of 1.5x. In a distribution this narrow, the biggest single lever on your pay in Extruding and Forming Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Synthetic and Glass Fibers is the cost of living where you do it.
Put in money rather than ratios: $39,360 at the 25th percentile, $46,350 at the midpoint, $57,280 at the 75th. $17,920 separates the quarter of Extruding and Forming Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Synthetic and Glass Fibers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $57,280, the 75th percentile, is worth $10,930 a year more than the $46,350 midpoint and $17,920 more than the $39,360 a quarter of Extruding and Forming Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Synthetic and Glass Fibers settle for.
It is $6,990 from $46,350 down to $39,360 but $10,930 up to $57,280. When a range leans this far upward, the interesting question is what puts someone in the top half, because the money is disproportionately there.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Extruding and Forming Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Synthetic and Glass Fibers is $22.28 an hour. The quarters sit at $18.92 and $27.53, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $46,350 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.
The hourly number on this page is $46,350 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Extruding and Forming Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Synthetic and Glass Fibers, 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