Packaging and Filling Machine Operators and Tenders
What the pay figures show
- New Hampshire pays this job the most, $49,450. It still pays the most after tax. What it does not do is stay ahead once you count what living there costs. Level that out and Wyoming wins, at $45,640. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For packaging and filling machine operators and tenders, New Hampshire leads both nominally at $49,450 and after tax — state income tax differentials are not large enough here to disturb the ordering. Regional price parity is: deflating take-home by each state's price level puts Wyoming first at $45,640. The adjustment that matters for this occupation is therefore cost of living rather than tax, which is the opposite of the assumption most relocation comparisons start from.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$43,220
People doing it
379,060
Highest paid
$49,450
NH
Best off, really
$45,640
WY, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$33,390
Highest tenth
$60,030
Lowest, really
$27,922
HI
States with data
50
National average
$44,590
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
90.85%
WY, 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 $27,922 and $45,640. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- 379,060 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $43,220. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- This job is not published everywhere — 50 jurisdictions have a figure, with $43,220 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. New Hampshire tops the ones that are.
- Wages for packaging and filling machine operators and tenders cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $27,922 to $45,640. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- National employment in packaging and filling machine operators and tenders is 379,060 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- 50 jurisdictions carry a published median for packaging and filling machine operators and tenders. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Packaging and Filling Machine Operators and Tenders
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $33,390 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $43,220 |
| Top tenth earn over | $60,030 |
| This salary | $43,220 |
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 Packaging and Filling Machine Operators and Tenders
The national median for this job
$43,220around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $33,390 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $43,220 |
| Top tenth | $60,030 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Packaging and Filling Machine Operators and Tenders, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | New Mexico · $35,640 |
|---|---|
| Highest | New Hampshire · $49,450 |
| Spread | $13,810 |
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 | $38,950 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $40,082 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WY | $48,890 | $41,463 | $45,640 |
| ND | $47,390 | $40,258 | $45,452 |
| MO | $48,070 | $39,482 | $43,027 |
| WV | $46,410 | $38,178 | $42,528 |
| IA | $45,660 | $37,745 | $42,521 |
| SD | $43,860 | $37,422 | $42,479 |
| NE | $46,220 | $37,918 | $41,956 |
| ID | $46,720 | $38,097 | $41,670 |
| KY | $45,450 | $37,226 | $41,148 |
| WI | $46,220 | $37,893 | $40,702 |
| MT | $44,350 | $36,487 | $40,432 |
| KS | $44,890 | $36,033 | $40,052 |
| ME | $47,970 | $38,806 | $39,966 |
| TN | $43,190 | $36,883 | $39,867 |
| IN | $44,600 | $36,730 | $39,844 |
| NH | $49,450 | $41,913 | $39,786 |
| OH | $43,310 | $36,505 | $39,761 |
| VT | $46,670 | $38,372 | $39,708 |
| PA | $44,480 | $36,554 | $37,491 |
| CO | $46,010 | $37,833 | $37,317 |
| UT | $43,780 | $35,409 | $37,272 |
| OK | $39,310 | $32,497 | $36,809 |
| LA | $38,370 | $32,245 | $36,499 |
| AR | $37,740 | $31,566 | $36,489 |
| GA | $42,920 | $35,123 | $36,322 |
| SC | $40,010 | $33,830 | $36,308 |
| MI | $41,690 | $34,157 | $36,266 |
| NC | $41,150 | $34,111 | $36,235 |
| VA | $44,950 | $36,473 | $36,202 |
| MS | $37,720 | $31,071 | $35,595 |
| IL | $43,150 | $34,860 | $35,264 |
| TX | $38,950 | $33,476 | $34,450 |
| AL | $37,820 | $30,960 | $34,412 |
| MN | $40,960 | $33,719 | $34,261 |
| MD | $43,670 | $35,558 | $34,202 |
| AZ | $40,560 | $34,158 | $33,785 |
| OR | $45,180 | $35,079 | $33,498 |
| NM | $35,640 | $30,252 | $33,469 |
| NV | $37,440 | $32,263 | $33,268 |
| WA | $41,700 | $35,686 | $32,871 |
| AK | $38,730 | $33,300 | $32,738 |
| CA | $44,020 | $36,654 | $32,558 |
| DE | $38,500 | $31,545 | $31,782 |
| RI | $38,330 | $31,961 | $31,516 |
| CT | $39,460 | $32,585 | $31,426 |
| NJ | $40,280 | $33,853 | $31,091 |
| FL | $37,170 | $32,046 | $30,977 |
| MA | $40,360 | $32,911 | $30,406 |
| NY | $39,330 | $32,255 | $29,969 |
| HI | $36,810 | $30,326 | $27,922 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $43,220, 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.
- 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 New Hampshire, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $41,913.
- 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 Hawaii, on $27,922.
- These are distribution medians for packaging and filling machine operators and tenders, with a national value of $43,220. 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.
- Take-home calculations for packaging and filling machine operators and tenders 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 $41,913, in New Hampshire. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- Real-terms results for packaging and filling machine operators and tenders 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; Hawaii anchors the distribution at $27,922. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.