Occupation / job
Food Processing Workers, All Other
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
A median of $39,680 against the $50,020 all-occupation figure leaves Food Processing Workers, All Other 21% behind — $10,340 across a year. Whether that is workable depends almost entirely on where you would be doing it.
65,000 people are employed as Food Processing Workers, All Other. 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 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 Processing Workers, All Other — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
From $36,410 at the bottom quarter to $44,130 at the top is $643 a month — a 1.2x ratio, which is about as compressed as this dataset gets. Doing Food Processing Workers, All Other unusually well is worth strikingly little in cash.
A quarter of Food Processing Workers, All Other earn under $36,410, which is $13,610 short of the $50,020 national midpoint. Assume you start there and check whether the arithmetic still works.
Avoid it if cold, wet or fast-line conditions would be physically unsustainable for you over years.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 65,000 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
A 1.2x ratio between the quarters of Food Processing Workers, All Other is about as compressed as federal wage data gets. Pay that flat is set by a schedule — a union grade, a public band, a licence tier — and individual negotiation moves it very little off $39,680.
Put in money rather than ratios: $36,410 at the 25th percentile, $39,680 at the midpoint, $44,130 at the 75th. $7,720 separates the quarter of Food Processing Workers, All Other at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Between $36,410 and $44,130 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $39,680. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $4,450; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $7,720.
$4,450 separates $39,680 from the $44,130 top quarter, while only $3,270 separates it from $36,410. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Food Processing Workers, All Other has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Food Processing Workers, All Other is $19.07 an hour. The quarters sit at $17.50 and $21.21, 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 Processing Workers, All Other. The self-employed are excluded, so $39,680 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Food Processing Workers, All Other, the hourly figure is $39,680 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