Occupation / job
Tool Grinders, Filers, and Sharpeners
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
With a $50,060 median against a $50,020 national one, Tool Grinders, Filers, and Sharpeners is an average-paying occupation by construction — $3 a month either way. What separates it from the alternatives is not on this line.
Employment as Tool Grinders, Filers, and Sharpeners stands at 5,600. That is small enough that your local market may have a dozen posts in total; mobility will matter more to your earnings than seniority does.
This work suits people who like setting a machine up properly and then producing consistently, which is a different skill from making one good part.
We carry no verified training length for Tool Grinders, Filers, and Sharpeners — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
$40,800 to $62,150 — 1.5x, or $1,779 a month between the quarters. An unremarkable spread, which means the useful planning number for Tool Grinders, Filers, and Sharpeners is the bottom of it rather than the middle.
A quarter of Tool Grinders, Filers, and Sharpeners earn less than $40,800, $9,220 off the $50,020 national midpoint — $19.61 an hour. The floor here is close enough to ordinary that the case against this work, if there is one, is not financial.
Avoid it if you would resent the shift pattern; much of this work runs nights because the machines do.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 5,600 figure counts people already working as Tool Grinders, Filers, and Sharpeners, 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
1.5x between $40,800 and $62,150 is the ordinary shape of an occupation where experience and region both matter and neither dominates. $50,060 is a fair expectation by mid-career, not on day one.
In cash terms the middle half of Tool Grinders, Filers, and Sharpeners runs $40,800 to $62,150 — $21,350 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $50,060.
Between $40,800 and $62,150 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $50,060. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $12,090; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $21,350.
From $50,060 it is $9,260 down to the bottom quarter and $12,090 up to the top. The upper half of the range is the longer one, which is the ordinary shape for work where experience compounds.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $24.06 at the midpoint for Tool Grinders, Filers, and Sharpeners, $19.61 at the 25th percentile and $29.87 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 Tool Grinders, Filers, and Sharpeners for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $50,060 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Tool Grinders, Filers, and Sharpeners, the hourly figure is $50,060 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