Occupation / job
Food Batchmakers
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 $42,290 against $50,020, this pays $644 a month less than the typical American job. Below the midpoint but within reach of it: the spread and the floor below decide whether that description flatters Food Batchmakers or not.
With 174,520 in the occupation, Food Batchmakers is a big field with a visible internal market. Big fields reward moving: the pay you can negotiate on arrival usually beats what the annual review will give you for staying.
This work suits people who can hold a standard on a moving line and treat the hygiene rules as the job rather than as an interruption to it.
We carry no verified training length for Food Batchmakers — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
A quarter of Food Batchmakers earn under $36,350 and a quarter over $49,670 — 1.4x, or $13,320 apart. Narrow spreads usually mean a pay schedule, which is stability bought at the price of upside.
A quarter of the field earns under $36,350 — $13,670 below the $50,020 the typical American job pays. That is the number to plan on for a first year, not the midpoint.
Avoid it if the cold, the wet or the line speed would be unsustainable for you physically.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 174,520 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
$36,350 to $49,670 is a 1.4x range. Ranges this tight usually mean the employer set is homogeneous — the same kind of organisation paying the same kind of scale — so the lever you have is geography rather than employer.
Put in money rather than ratios: $36,350 at the 25th percentile, $42,290 at the midpoint, $49,670 at the 75th. $13,320 separates the quarter of Food Batchmakers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $49,670, the 75th percentile, is worth $7,380 a year more than the $42,290 midpoint and $13,320 more than the $36,350 a quarter of Food Batchmakers settle for.
The climb from $42,290 to $49,670 is $7,380; the drop to $36,350 is $5,940. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Food Batchmakers and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Food Batchmakers is $20.33 an hour. The quarters sit at $17.47 and $23.87, 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 Food Batchmakers. The self-employed are excluded, so $42,290 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 $42,290 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