Occupation / job
Foundry Mold and Coremakers
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
Foundry Mold and Coremakers pays $48,110, effectively level with the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — $1,910 apart, which is inside the noise of a single year’s survey. Treat this as an average-paying occupation and decide it on everything else.
12,790 people work as Foundry Mold and Coremakers. That is enough for a functioning national market and not enough for a functioning local one — in most metros this is a few employers rather than a field you can move around inside.
These roles suit people who want a trade where the work is measurable to the thousandth and nobody can argue with the gauge.
No verified preparation time is on file for Foundry Mold and Coremakers. 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
The middle half runs $41,870 to $57,350 — $1,290 a month between the quarters, a 1.4x ratio. Spreads this narrow are usually set by a grade or a scale, so the negotiation you are imagining probably is not available.
Even the bottom quarter, under $41,870, lands within $8,150 of the $50,020 typical American wage. The downside of Foundry Mold and Coremakers is not really the money.
Avoid it if the noise, the fume exposure and the standing are not acceptable long-run terms.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 12,790 people employed as Foundry Mold and Coremakers; 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
$41,870 to $57,350 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.
The middle half of this field earns between $41,870 and $57,350. That is $15,480 of range, with $48,110 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
The 75th percentile is $57,350. Reaching it from the $48,110 midpoint is $9,240 a year; reaching it from the $41,870 that the bottom quarter of Foundry Mold and Coremakers earn is $15,480.
The climb from $48,110 to $57,350 is $9,240, against $6,240 down to $41,870. Rather more of the range sits above the midpoint than below it, so the realistic upside in Foundry Mold and Coremakers is larger than the realistic downside.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Foundry Mold and Coremakers is $23.12 an hour. The quarters sit at $20.12 and $27.57, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $48,110 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.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Foundry Mold and Coremakers, the hourly figure is $48,110 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