Occupation / job
Food Cooking Machine 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
Food Cooking Machine Operators and Tenders pays a median $41,590 against $50,020 across all occupations — $4.05 an hour of difference. At that distance the deciding variable is where you do it, not how long you have done it.
With 31,250 employed as Food Cooking Machine Operators and Tenders, most metros have a working market: several employers, visible turnover, and the ability to change jobs without moving house.
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.
No verified preparation time is on file for Food Cooking Machine Operators and Tenders. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
A quarter of Food Cooking Machine Operators and Tenders earn under $36,190 and a quarter over $47,380: 1.3x, and $11,190 between the ends. That is a narrow band — enough room to be paid better than average, not enough for the occupation to be a route to a materially different income.
The 25th percentile is $36,190 — $17.39 an hour, and $13,830 below the $50,020 typical American job. Entry-level in this field means that number, not the midpoint, so budget against it.
Avoid it if cold, wet or fast-line conditions would be physically unsustainable for you over years.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 31,250 people employed as Food Cooking Machine 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
A 1.3x spread means the top quarter of Food Cooking Machine Operators and Tenders is not doing a different job from the bottom quarter, just a slightly better-paid version of the same one. Between $36,190 and $47,380 is the whole of the negotiation.
Put in money rather than ratios: $36,190 at the 25th percentile, $41,590 at the midpoint, $47,380 at the 75th. $11,190 separates the quarter of Food Cooking Machine Operators and Tenders at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $47,380. Reaching it from the $41,590 midpoint is $5,790 a year; reaching it from the $36,190 that the bottom quarter of Food Cooking Machine Operators and Tenders earn is $11,190.
$5,400 down to $36,190, $5,790 up to $47,380: the midpoint of Food Cooking Machine Operators and Tenders is centred in its own middle half. That symmetry is why the median and the average would say much the same thing here, which is not true of most pages on this site.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $17.39 at the bottom quarter, $19.99 at the midpoint, $22.77 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Food Cooking Machine Operators and Tenders for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $41,590 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Food Cooking Machine Operators and Tenders, the hourly figure is $41,590 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else