Cutting and Slicing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. Minnesota pays this job best, at $58,260. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $47,302 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for cutting and slicing machine setters, operators, and tenders is also the real leader: Minnesota at $58,260, holding through tax and through price deflation to $47,302. Both adjustments leave the ordering at the top intact, which indicates a wage premium large enough to dominate the state's tax burden and price level rather than merely offset them.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$46,570
People doing it
44,980
Highest paid
$58,260
MN
Best off, really
$47,302
MN, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$35,930
Highest tenth
$61,120
Lowest, really
$31,054
NM
States with data
47
National average
$47,460
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
98.42%
MN, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $31,054 and $47,302. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- Just 44,980 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 47 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $46,570. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, Minnesota pays most.
- Interstate variation for cutting and slicing machine setters, operators, and tenders is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $31,054 to $47,302. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- 44,980 are employed nationally in cutting and slicing machine setters, operators, and tenders — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for cutting and slicing machine setters, operators, and tenders in 47 jurisdictions, short of the full set. ⚠️ Absence reflects estimate suppression — small samples or disclosure rules — rather than absence of employment, so the state comparison above is over the published subset.
Pay band: Cutting and Slicing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $35,930 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $46,570 |
| Top tenth earn over | $61,120 |
| This salary | $46,570 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Cutting and Slicing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
The national median for this job
$46,570around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $35,930 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $46,570 |
| Top tenth | $61,120 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Cutting and Slicing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, state by state
The national median for this job
47states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | New Mexico · $32,770 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Minnesota · $58,260 |
| Spread | $25,490 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $42,210 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $43,437 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| MN | $58,260 | $46,554 | $47,302 |
| MT | $51,540 | $41,927 | $46,459 |
| IA | $49,600 | $40,761 | $45,919 |
| ND | $47,480 | $40,330 | $45,534 |
| MO | $50,930 | $41,646 | $45,385 |
| AR | $47,320 | $38,909 | $44,978 |
| VT | $52,220 | $42,646 | $44,131 |
| OH | $48,400 | $40,455 | $44,063 |
| NE | $48,300 | $39,495 | $43,701 |
| SD | $44,980 | $38,321 | $43,500 |
| KY | $48,180 | $39,324 | $43,467 |
| SC | $47,410 | $39,446 | $42,335 |
| WI | $48,040 | $39,265 | $42,177 |
| ID | $46,840 | $38,187 | $41,768 |
| CO | $51,750 | $42,193 | $41,617 |
| IN | $46,150 | $37,930 | $41,146 |
| ME | $49,200 | $39,711 | $40,899 |
| TN | $44,030 | $37,558 | $40,597 |
| NH | $50,290 | $42,588 | $40,427 |
| IL | $49,740 | $39,829 | $40,290 |
| KS | $44,760 | $35,936 | $39,944 |
| PA | $46,850 | $38,386 | $39,370 |
| WA | $50,430 | $42,701 | $39,333 |
| MS | $41,590 | $34,026 | $38,979 |
| LA | $41,170 | $34,411 | $38,951 |
| AK | $46,240 | $39,334 | $38,671 |
| UT | $45,510 | $36,722 | $38,654 |
| MI | $44,620 | $36,387 | $38,633 |
| AZ | $46,780 | $39,001 | $38,574 |
| NC | $43,770 | $36,111 | $38,360 |
| NV | $43,470 | $37,108 | $38,264 |
| OR | $51,180 | $39,375 | $37,600 |
| RI | $45,950 | $37,798 | $37,271 |
| GA | $44,130 | $36,035 | $37,265 |
| NY | $49,680 | $40,012 | $37,177 |
| TX | $42,210 | $36,096 | $37,145 |
| NJ | $48,600 | $40,093 | $36,822 |
| VA | $44,790 | $36,354 | $36,084 |
| AL | $39,740 | $32,419 | $36,033 |
| OK | $37,910 | $31,435 | $35,606 |
| WV | $37,920 | $31,671 | $35,280 |
| MD | $44,820 | $36,428 | $35,038 |
| CT | $44,530 | $36,206 | $34,918 |
| CA | $46,110 | $38,249 | $33,975 |
| FL | $40,540 | $34,754 | $33,594 |
| MA | $43,790 | $35,496 | $32,794 |
| NM | $32,770 | $28,069 | $31,054 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of this job earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $46,570.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for this job, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is Minnesota, at $46,554.
- Levelling out prices for this job is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — New Mexico sits at the bottom on $31,054.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for cutting and slicing machine setters, operators, and tenders, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $46,570, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- Retained-pay figures for cutting and slicing machine setters, operators, and tenders model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $46,554, which leads in Minnesota.
- The price deflation applied to cutting and slicing machine setters, operators, and tenders uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is New Mexico at $31,054. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — New Mexico anchors the bottom at $31,054 — and the two source series are dated independently.