Occupation / job
Sawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Wood
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
Sawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Wood pays a median $42,770 against $50,020 across all occupations — $3.48 an hour of difference. At that distance the deciding variable is where you do it, not how long you have done it.
40,850 people are employed as Sawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Wood. 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.
Woodworking suits people who want a finished object at the end of the day and can work to a tolerance in a material that moves with the weather.
How long it takes to become one of the 40,850 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.
Who should not do this
$12,110 separates the bottom quarter at $36,510 from the top quarter at $48,620, a ratio of 1.3x. In a band that tight, moving up inside Sawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Wood pays less than moving out of it would.
The 25th percentile is $36,510 — $17.55 an hour, and $13,510 below the $50,020 typical American job. Entry-level in this field means that number, not the midpoint, so budget against it.
Avoid it if dust, noise and machine risk are not acceptable to you every day for the whole of a career.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 40,850 people employed as Sawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Wood; 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
A 1.3x spread means the top quarter of Sawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Wood is not doing a different job from the bottom quarter, just a slightly better-paid version of the same one. Between $36,510 and $48,620 is the whole of the negotiation.
Put in money rather than ratios: $36,510 at the 25th percentile, $42,770 at the midpoint, $48,620 at the 75th. $12,110 separates the quarter of Sawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Wood at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $48,620. Reaching it from the $42,770 midpoint is $5,850 a year; reaching it from the $36,510 that the bottom quarter of Sawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Wood earn is $12,110.
There is $6,260 between $36,510 and $42,770, and $5,850 between $42,770 and $48,620. The lower half of the range is marginally the longer one — worth knowing if you would be entering Sawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Wood at the bottom of it.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Sawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Wood is $20.56 an hour. The quarters sit at $17.55 and $23.37, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $42,770 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 Sawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Wood, the hourly figure is $42,770 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