Occupation / job
Inspectors, Testers, Sorters, Samplers, and Weighers
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
Inspectors, Testers, Sorters, Samplers, and Weighers pays $48,570, effectively level with the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — $1,450 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.
597,370 people do this work. An occupation this large has a published, well-known going rate — which means less scope to be underpaid and less scope to negotiate above it.
These roles suit people who want a fixed site, a known task and a shift that ends, and who would rather be reliable than promoted.
No verified preparation time is on file for Inspectors, Testers, Sorters, Samplers, and Weighers. 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 earn below $39,890 and a quarter above $61,440: a 1.5x ratio, $21,550 between the ends. That is an ordinary working spread, which also means experience and location explain most of it and there is no shortcut through the middle.
A quarter of Inspectors, Testers, Sorters, Samplers, and Weighers earn under $39,890, which is $10,130 short of the $50,020 national midpoint. Assume you start there and check whether the arithmetic still works.
Avoid it if you would be unable to move should the plant close, or if repetitive work would grind you down.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 597,370 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 1.5x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $48,570 as where you might be after years in Inspectors, Testers, Sorters, Samplers, and Weighers, and $39,890 as where you would start.
Put in money rather than ratios: $39,890 at the 25th percentile, $48,570 at the midpoint, $61,440 at the 75th. $21,550 separates the quarter of Inspectors, Testers, Sorters, Samplers, and Weighers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $61,440, the 75th percentile, is worth $12,870 a year more than the $48,570 midpoint and $21,550 more than the $39,890 a quarter of Inspectors, Testers, Sorters, Samplers, and Weighers settle for.
$12,870 separates $48,570 from the $61,440 top quarter, while only $8,680 separates it from $39,890. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Inspectors, Testers, Sorters, Samplers, and Weighers has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $19.17 at the bottom quarter, $23.35 at the midpoint, $29.53 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 Inspectors, Testers, Sorters, Samplers, and Weighers for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $48,570 describes them.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $48,570 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