Extruding, Forming, Pressing, and Compacting Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. Maine pays this job best, at $57,990. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $47,561 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for extruding, forming, pressing, and compacting machine setters, operators, and tenders is also the real leader: Maine at $57,990, holding through tax and through price deflation to $47,561. 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
$45,760
People doing it
58,770
Highest paid
$57,990
ME
Best off, really
$47,561
ME, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$34,630
Highest tenth
$63,450
Lowest, really
$32,196
RI
States with data
45
National average
$47,260
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
97.1%
ME, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Nationally, this job pays within a fairly narrow band. Adjust for tax and for local prices and the band tightens again, to between $32,196 and $47,561. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- This is a small job: about 58,770 people nationally. Fewer workers means each state figure is built on less data.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 45 jurisdictions, averaging $45,760 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. Maine leads the published set.
- Wages for extruding, forming, pressing, and compacting machine setters, operators, and tenders cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $32,196 to $47,561. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- With 58,770 workers, extruding, forming, pressing, and compacting machine setters, operators, and tenders is among the smaller occupations BLS publishes. Treat single-state figures as indicative rather than precise; suppression and sampling error both bite harder at this scale.
- Coverage for extruding, forming, pressing, and compacting machine setters, operators, and tenders runs to 45 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: Extruding, Forming, Pressing, and Compacting Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $34,630 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $45,760 |
| Top tenth earn over | $63,450 |
| This salary | $45,760 |
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 Extruding, Forming, Pressing, and Compacting Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
The national median for this job
$45,760around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $34,630 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $45,760 |
| Top tenth | $63,450 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Extruding, Forming, Pressing, and Compacting Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, state by state
The national median for this job
45states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Kentucky · $36,180 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Maine · $57,990 |
| Spread | $21,810 |
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 | $37,710 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $38,806 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ME | $57,990 | $46,181 | $47,561 |
| WV | $50,690 | $41,436 | $46,157 |
| AR | $48,320 | $39,676 | $45,864 |
| IA | $49,340 | $40,562 | $45,694 |
| SC | $51,620 | $42,550 | $45,666 |
| PA | $53,580 | $43,587 | $44,704 |
| ND | $46,220 | $39,318 | $44,391 |
| VT | $52,340 | $42,738 | $44,226 |
| NE | $48,760 | $39,844 | $44,087 |
| NV | $50,050 | $42,395 | $43,715 |
| MS | $46,560 | $37,821 | $43,326 |
| OH | $47,070 | $39,423 | $42,938 |
| MN | $52,070 | $42,001 | $42,676 |
| MO | $47,470 | $39,028 | $42,532 |
| SD | $43,240 | $36,923 | $41,913 |
| IN | $46,790 | $38,425 | $41,683 |
| LA | $44,200 | $36,755 | $41,604 |
| UT | $49,100 | $39,447 | $41,522 |
| WI | $46,370 | $38,006 | $40,824 |
| CO | $49,100 | $40,180 | $39,632 |
| KS | $44,290 | $35,584 | $39,553 |
| VA | $49,390 | $39,786 | $39,490 |
| OK | $42,180 | $34,674 | $39,275 |
| TN | $41,970 | $35,903 | $38,808 |
| IL | $47,370 | $38,042 | $38,482 |
| NH | $47,730 | $40,531 | $38,475 |
| GA | $45,670 | $37,196 | $38,465 |
| AZ | $46,440 | $38,736 | $38,313 |
| NC | $43,050 | $35,562 | $37,776 |
| MD | $46,640 | $37,803 | $36,362 |
| CT | $46,090 | $37,389 | $36,059 |
| NJ | $47,080 | $38,955 | $35,777 |
| OR | $48,360 | $37,356 | $35,672 |
| MA | $47,220 | $38,080 | $35,182 |
| AL | $38,650 | $31,591 | $35,112 |
| ID | $38,580 | $31,988 | $34,988 |
| WA | $44,510 | $37,944 | $34,951 |
| CA | $47,300 | $39,155 | $34,779 |
| MI | $39,790 | $32,711 | $34,731 |
| NM | $36,710 | $31,065 | $34,370 |
| NY | $44,660 | $36,250 | $33,681 |
| TX | $37,710 | $32,480 | $33,424 |
| KY | $36,180 | $30,102 | $33,274 |
| FL | $39,800 | $34,159 | $33,019 |
| RI | $39,230 | $32,650 | $32,196 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for this job, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $45,760 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- 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 Maine, at $46,181.
- The price adjustment for this job uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — Rhode Island anchors the bottom at $32,196. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- All wage figures for extruding, forming, pressing, and compacting machine setters, operators, and tenders are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $45,760. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- Retained-pay figures for extruding, forming, pressing, and compacting 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 $46,181, which leads in Maine.
- Real-terms figures for extruding, forming, pressing, and compacting machine setters, operators, and tenders deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.