Occupation / job
Textile Knitting and Weaving Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
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
Textile Knitting and Weaving Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders pays $39,530 where the typical American job pays $50,020 — $10,490 a year short, or $5.04 an hour. That is a liveable wage in a cheap state and a difficult one in an expensive city, and nothing about the national figure tells you which you would be in.
Employment as Textile Knitting and Weaving Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders is 13,030 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.
These roles suit people with real speed and hand accuracy who want piece work they can see the result of, in a domestic industry much smaller than it once was.
How long it takes to become one of the 13,030 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
$8,830 separates the bottom quarter at $36,390 from the top quarter at $45,220, a ratio of 1.2x. In a band that tight, moving up inside Textile Knitting and Weaving Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders pays less than moving out of it would.
A quarter of Textile Knitting and Weaving Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders earn under $36,390, which is $13,630 short of the $50,020 national midpoint. Assume you start there and check whether the arithmetic still works.
Avoid it if you need a growing industry; domestic production in this category has been shrinking for decades.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 13,030 figure counts people already working as Textile Knitting and Weaving Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, 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
At 1.2x between $36,390 and $45,220, this is a narrow distribution. $39,530 is a reliable number to plan around, which is worth something — but so is knowing that outperforming the field will not be paid for.
The middle half of this field earns between $36,390 and $45,220. That is $8,830 of range, with $39,530 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
The 75th percentile is $45,220. Reaching it from the $39,530 midpoint is $5,690 a year; reaching it from the $36,390 that the bottom quarter of Textile Knitting and Weaving Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders earn is $8,830.
The distance from the midpoint up to $45,220 is $5,690 — well over the $3,140 down to $36,390. Distributions leaning this way mean the median understates what the upper half of Textile Knitting and Weaving Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders earns, and half the field is in that upper half.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Textile Knitting and Weaving Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders is $19.00 an hour. The quarters sit at $17.49 and $21.74, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Textile Knitting and Weaving Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders. The self-employed are excluded, so $39,530 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Textile Knitting and Weaving Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, the hourly figure is $39,530 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