Occupation / job
Welding, Soldering, and Brazing 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
At $47,920 against $50,020, Welding, Soldering, and Brazing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders sits $1.00 an hour under the typical American job. A gap that small is not a reason to choose it or to rule it out; the spread and the entry cost are where the real decision is.
31,600 people do this work nationally. That is the size at which Welding, Soldering, and Brazing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders becomes a career rather than a post — enough employers in a normal city that leaving one of them is a decision rather than a crisis.
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.
How long it takes to become one of the 31,600 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
A quarter of Welding, Soldering, and Brazing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders earn under $40,560 and a quarter over $57,390 — 1.4x, or $16,830 apart. Narrow spreads usually mean a pay schedule, which is stability bought at the price of upside.
Even the bottom quarter, under $40,560, lands within $9,460 of the $50,020 typical American wage. The downside of Welding, Soldering, and Brazing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders is not really the money.
Avoid it if the noise, the fume exposure and the standing are not acceptable long-run terms.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 31,600 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
$40,560 to $57,390 is a 1.4x range. Ranges this tight usually mean the employer set is homogeneous — the same kind of organisation paying the same kind of scale — so the lever you have is geography rather than employer.
The middle half of this field earns between $40,560 and $57,390. That is $16,830 of range, with $47,920 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Getting to $57,390, the 75th percentile, is worth $9,470 a year more than the $47,920 midpoint and $16,830 more than the $40,560 a quarter of Welding, Soldering, and Brazing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders settle for.
The climb from $47,920 to $57,390 is $9,470; the drop to $40,560 is $7,360. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Welding, Soldering, and Brazing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $23.03 at the midpoint for Welding, Soldering, and Brazing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, $19.50 at the 25th percentile and $27.59 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $47,920 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 Welding, Soldering, and Brazing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, the hourly figure is $47,920 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