Occupation / job
Industrial Machinery Mechanics
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 $64,520 midpoint puts Industrial Machinery Mechanics $14,500 above the $50,020 typical American job — a 29% premium paid for the training, the licence or the conditions. It is not free money and it disappears the moment you stop meeting the requirement.
439,640 people work as Industrial Machinery Mechanics — large enough that the occupation is always hiring somewhere and always losing people somewhere else. Constant demand is security; it is rarely leverage.
This work suits people who like variety in the fault rather than variety in the setting, and who would rather fix than build.
We carry no verified training length for Industrial Machinery Mechanics — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
Between $55,010 and $78,780 there is $23,770, a ratio of 1.4x. Tight distributions are predictable, and predictable cuts both ways: little risk of being badly underpaid, little prospect of doing much better.
The 25th percentile is $55,010, $4,990 above the $50,020 typical American job. A floor above the national midpoint is rare, and it is worth more than an equivalent amount of upside.
Avoid it if you would find it demoralising to arrive only when something has already failed.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 439,640 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
Top quarter to bottom quarter is 1.4x. In a band that narrow, $64,520 is a genuinely representative number for Industrial Machinery Mechanics and the main variable left is where you live.
In cash terms the middle half of Industrial Machinery Mechanics runs $55,010 to $78,780 — $23,770 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $64,520.
Getting to $78,780, the 75th percentile, is worth $14,260 a year more than the $64,520 midpoint and $23,770 more than the $55,010 a quarter of Industrial Machinery Mechanics settle for.
The climb from $64,520 to $78,780 is $14,260, against $9,510 down to $55,010. Rather more of the range sits above the midpoint than below it, so the realistic upside in Industrial Machinery Mechanics is larger than the realistic downside.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $31.01 at the midpoint for Industrial Machinery Mechanics, $26.44 at the 25th percentile and $37.87 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
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 Industrial Machinery Mechanics for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $64,520 describes them.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $64,520 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