Multiple Machine Tool Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. West Virginia pays this job best, at $76,080. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $66,565 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for multiple machine tool setters, operators, and tenders, metal and plastic is also the real leader: West Virginia at $76,080, holding through tax and through price deflation to $66,565. 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
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$47,180
People doing it
124,590
Highest paid
$76,080
WV
Best off, really
$66,565
WV, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$35,780
Highest tenth
$74,450
Lowest, really
$31,810
RI
States with data
45
National average
$50,030
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
89.77%
WV, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Where you do this job matters enormously. The best state pays roughly twice what the worst does. Prices alone cannot explain a gap that size. Level everything out and the range still runs $31,810 to $66,565.
- About 124,590 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $47,180. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 45 jurisdictions, averaging $47,180 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. West Virginia leads the published set.
- Geographic dispersion in multiple machine tool setters, operators, and tenders, metal and plastic is unusually wide: the top state's median is approximately double the bottom's, a spread that price differentials cannot account for. The real-terms range, after tax and price deflation, still runs $31,810 to $66,565 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- With 124,590 workers, multiple machine tool 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 multiple machine tool setters, operators, and tenders, metal and plastic 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: Multiple Machine Tool Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $35,780 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $47,180 |
| Top tenth earn over | $74,450 |
| This salary | $47,180 |
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 Multiple Machine Tool Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic
The national median for this job
$47,180around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $35,780 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $47,180 |
| Top tenth | $74,450 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Multiple Machine Tool Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic, state by state
The national median for this job
45states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $36,330 |
|---|---|
| Highest | West Virginia · $76,080 |
| Spread | $39,750 |
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 | $49,050 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $50,476 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WV | $76,080 | $59,757 | $66,565 |
| KY | $54,960 | $44,534 | $49,227 |
| MO | $53,160 | $43,333 | $47,223 |
| ND | $49,190 | $41,704 | $47,085 |
| NE | $50,960 | $41,511 | $45,932 |
| IA | $48,910 | $40,232 | $45,324 |
| ID | $50,410 | $40,866 | $44,699 |
| LA | $46,210 | $38,310 | $43,364 |
| SD | $44,700 | $38,096 | $43,245 |
| KS | $48,450 | $38,695 | $43,011 |
| OK | $46,470 | $37,928 | $42,960 |
| TX | $49,050 | $41,592 | $42,801 |
| VT | $50,450 | $41,283 | $42,720 |
| OH | $46,420 | $38,918 | $42,389 |
| AR | $44,080 | $36,426 | $42,107 |
| WI | $47,700 | $39,009 | $41,901 |
| NC | $47,320 | $38,822 | $41,239 |
| SC | $45,740 | $38,215 | $41,014 |
| VA | $50,600 | $40,688 | $40,386 |
| MN | $48,980 | $39,728 | $40,367 |
| PA | $48,070 | $39,328 | $40,337 |
| IN | $45,100 | $37,117 | $40,264 |
| TN | $43,630 | $37,237 | $40,249 |
| MD | $51,780 | $41,689 | $40,099 |
| MI | $45,920 | $37,376 | $39,684 |
| AL | $43,800 | $35,502 | $39,460 |
| WA | $50,540 | $42,789 | $39,414 |
| ME | $46,710 | $37,879 | $39,011 |
| WY | $40,000 | $34,320 | $37,777 |
| CO | $46,160 | $37,947 | $37,430 |
| NY | $49,890 | $40,170 | $37,323 |
| UT | $43,550 | $35,234 | $37,088 |
| NH | $45,710 | $38,908 | $36,934 |
| IL | $44,350 | $35,765 | $36,179 |
| MA | $48,230 | $38,841 | $35,885 |
| AZ | $43,090 | $36,128 | $35,733 |
| NV | $40,310 | $34,569 | $35,646 |
| OR | $47,470 | $36,719 | $35,063 |
| CA | $46,810 | $38,784 | $34,450 |
| MS | $36,330 | $30,010 | $34,379 |
| FL | $41,220 | $35,300 | $34,122 |
| CT | $42,580 | $34,817 | $33,578 |
| GA | $38,810 | $32,026 | $33,119 |
| NJ | $41,390 | $34,698 | $31,867 |
| RI | $38,720 | $32,260 | $31,810 |
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 $47,180 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- Take-home figures for this job assume one person filing alone, with no dependants and nothing going into a pension before tax. Any of those lowers the tax and raises what you keep, so treat these as the plain case rather than your case. Local city income taxes are not included either, and in a few states those matter. In West Virginia, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $59,757.
- 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 — Rhode Island sits at the bottom on $31,810.
- All wage figures for multiple machine tool setters, operators, and tenders, metal and plastic are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $47,180. 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.
- Take-home calculations for multiple machine tool setters, operators, and tenders, metal and plastic assume a single filer with no dependants, the standard deduction, and no pre-tax retirement or HSA contributions. Each omitted item reduces taxable income, so the figures function as a lower bound on retained pay for this household shape; the highest such figure is $59,757, in West Virginia. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- The price deflation applied to multiple machine tool setters, operators, and tenders, metal and plastic 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 Rhode Island at $31,810. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Rhode Island anchors the bottom at $31,810 — and the two source series are dated independently.