Occupation / job
Forging 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
A $49,030 median against $50,020 across all occupations puts Forging Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic within $82 a month of the exact middle of the American labour market. Nothing in the headline number argues either way.
Employment as Forging Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic is 8,930 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.
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.
No verified preparation time is on file for Forging Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic. 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 Forging Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic earn under $42,440 and a quarter over $60,130 — 1.4x, or $17,690 apart. Narrow spreads usually mean a pay schedule, which is stability bought at the price of upside.
A quarter of Forging Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic earn less than $42,440, $7,580 off the $50,020 national midpoint — $20.40 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 the noise, the fume exposure and the standing are not acceptable long-run terms.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 8,930 figure counts people already working as Forging Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
Top quarter to bottom quarter is 1.4x. In a band that narrow, $49,030 is a genuinely representative number for Forging Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic and the main variable left is where you live.
Put in money rather than ratios: $42,440 at the 25th percentile, $49,030 at the midpoint, $60,130 at the 75th. $17,690 separates the quarter of Forging Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $60,130. Reaching it from the $49,030 midpoint is $11,100 a year; reaching it from the $42,440 that the bottom quarter of Forging Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic earn is $17,690.
It is $6,590 from $49,030 down to $42,440 but $11,100 up to $60,130. When a range leans this far upward, the interesting question is what puts someone in the top half, because the money is disproportionately there.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $23.57 at the midpoint for Forging Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic, $20.40 at the 25th percentile and $28.90 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $49,030 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.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $49,030 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