Cutting, Punching, and Press Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic
What the pay figures show
- Where are this job paid best? Oregon, at $53,680. That answer does not survive a pay stub. Take income tax out and Washington is ahead. Then count what things cost locally, and North Dakota wins — the money there behaves like $46,368. Three questions. Three different states.
- The nominal leader for cutting, punching, and press machine setters, operators, and tenders, metal and plastic is Oregon at $53,680, but the ordering does not hold through either adjustment. Applying federal, FICA and state income tax moves the top position to Washington; deflating by regional price parity moves it again, to North Dakota at $46,368 in national-average terms. ⚠️ Federal tax is not what does this — it is uniform across states and cannot change a ranking. State income tax reorders first, price level second, and the two act independently.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$46,330
People doing it
171,200
Highest paid
$53,680
OR
Best off, really
$46,368
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$35,760
Highest tenth
$65,510
Lowest, really
$32,740
FL
States with data
49
National average
$48,430
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, 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 $32,740 and $46,368. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- About 171,200 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $46,330. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 49 jurisdictions, averaging $46,330 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. Oregon leads the published set.
- Interstate variation for cutting, punching, and press machine setters, operators, and tenders, metal and plastic is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $32,740 to $46,368. 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.
- With 171,200 workers, cutting, punching, and press machine setters, operators, and tenders, metal and plastic sits in the middle of the BLS headcount distribution. The state-level spread described above therefore applies to a meaningful population rather than a niche one.
- Coverage for cutting, punching, and press machine setters, operators, and tenders, metal and plastic runs to 49 jurisdictions, short of the full set. The omitted states are suppressed at source; treat the spread above as the range across reported states rather than across the country.
Pay band: Cutting, Punching, and Press Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $35,760 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $46,330 |
| Top tenth earn over | $65,510 |
| This salary | $46,330 |
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, Punching, and Press Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic
The national median for this job
$46,330around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $35,760 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $46,330 |
| Top tenth | $65,510 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Cutting, Punching, and Press Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | New Mexico · $39,430 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Oregon · $53,680 |
| Spread | $14,250 |
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 | $42,720 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $43,962 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND | $48,400 | $41,069 | $46,368 |
| IA | $48,240 | $39,720 | $44,746 |
| SD | $46,060 | $39,189 | $44,485 |
| NE | $48,690 | $39,791 | $44,028 |
| MT | $48,490 | $39,619 | $43,903 |
| WY | $46,890 | $39,856 | $43,871 |
| AR | $45,580 | $37,576 | $43,436 |
| MO | $48,310 | $39,664 | $43,225 |
| WI | $49,270 | $40,193 | $43,173 |
| ME | $51,820 | $41,640 | $42,885 |
| IN | $46,980 | $38,572 | $41,842 |
| NV | $47,690 | $40,499 | $41,760 |
| KS | $46,840 | $37,491 | $41,673 |
| KY | $45,760 | $37,464 | $41,412 |
| OH | $45,230 | $37,995 | $41,383 |
| TN | $44,780 | $38,161 | $41,248 |
| MN | $49,770 | $40,309 | $40,958 |
| CO | $50,790 | $41,463 | $40,898 |
| AK | $49,010 | $41,560 | $40,859 |
| PA | $47,860 | $39,166 | $40,170 |
| SC | $44,420 | $37,242 | $39,969 |
| WA | $51,160 | $43,287 | $39,873 |
| MI | $46,120 | $37,528 | $39,845 |
| IL | $48,990 | $39,263 | $39,718 |
| WV | $43,070 | $35,635 | $39,695 |
| UT | $46,670 | $37,603 | $39,581 |
| AL | $43,830 | $35,525 | $39,485 |
| OR | $53,680 | $41,165 | $39,309 |
| RI | $48,170 | $39,498 | $38,948 |
| NH | $48,110 | $40,836 | $38,764 |
| LA | $40,870 | $34,179 | $38,688 |
| AZ | $46,610 | $38,868 | $38,444 |
| OK | $40,930 | $33,726 | $38,201 |
| MS | $40,650 | $33,308 | $38,157 |
| NC | $43,400 | $35,829 | $38,060 |
| GA | $45,080 | $36,751 | $38,006 |
| VA | $47,300 | $38,226 | $37,942 |
| TX | $42,720 | $36,506 | $37,567 |
| VT | $43,560 | $35,977 | $37,230 |
| MD | $47,320 | $38,318 | $36,856 |
| NM | $39,430 | $33,134 | $36,658 |
| CT | $46,280 | $37,533 | $36,198 |
| ID | $39,580 | $32,738 | $35,809 |
| CA | $48,450 | $40,010 | $35,539 |
| NY | $46,930 | $37,951 | $35,262 |
| NJ | $45,680 | $37,908 | $34,815 |
| MA | $45,760 | $36,980 | $34,166 |
| DE | $41,640 | $33,894 | $34,149 |
| FL | $39,440 | $33,870 | $32,740 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $46,330, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- 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 Washington, at $43,287.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for this job. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits Florida, on $32,740.
- These are distribution medians for cutting, punching, and press machine setters, operators, and tenders, metal and plastic, with a national value of $46,330. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- Retained-pay figures for cutting, punching, and press machine setters, operators, and tenders, metal and plastic 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 $43,287, which leads in Washington.
- Real-terms results for cutting, punching, and press machine setters, operators, and tenders, metal and plastic rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; Florida anchors the distribution at $32,740. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.