Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for this job. Best paid: Washington, at $52,980. Tax does not change that. Best off: Iowa, at $47,298 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- Washington's $52,980 median for woodworking machine setters, operators, and tenders, except sawing survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: Iowa takes the top position at $47,298. Housing is where regional price variation concentrates, which is why the reordering appears at this step and not the previous one.
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
$43,380
People doing it
61,420
Highest paid
$52,980
WA
Best off, really
$47,298
IA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$32,110
Highest tenth
$56,830
Lowest, really
$30,224
TX
States with data
47
National average
$43,570
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.77%
IA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job is fairly steady around the country. Count tax and local prices and the states bunch closer still, from $30,224 to $47,298. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- Only 61,420 people do this job in the whole country. It is a small field, so the pay figures rest on fewer reports.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 47 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $43,380. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, Washington pays most.
- Geographic dispersion in woodworking machine setters, operators, and tenders, except sawing is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $30,224 through $47,298. Where nominal spread is this contained, relocation decisions in the occupation turn on non-wage factors, because the wage differential does not survive the adjustments in a form large enough to drive them.
- National employment in woodworking machine setters, operators, and tenders, except sawing is 61,420. ⚠️ At this headcount the state-level medians rest on comparatively thin samples, and year-to-year movement in any one state reflects sampling as much as wages.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for woodworking machine setters, operators, and tenders, except sawing 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: Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $32,110 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $43,380 |
| Top tenth earn over | $56,830 |
| This salary | $43,380 |
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 Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing
The national median for this job
$43,380around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $32,110 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $43,380 |
| Top tenth | $56,830 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing, state by state
The national median for this job
47states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Texas · $33,840 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $52,980 |
| Spread | $19,140 |
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 | $33,840 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $34,824 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| IA | $51,200 | $41,985 | $47,298 |
| NE | $49,190 | $40,170 | $44,447 |
| LA | $47,170 | $39,052 | $44,204 |
| ND | $45,820 | $38,996 | $44,028 |
| MN | $51,540 | $41,611 | $42,280 |
| MT | $45,610 | $37,441 | $41,488 |
| WA | $52,980 | $44,749 | $41,220 |
| MI | $47,680 | $38,715 | $41,106 |
| ID | $45,730 | $37,354 | $40,857 |
| SD | $41,740 | $35,718 | $40,545 |
| OH | $43,930 | $36,986 | $40,285 |
| VT | $46,480 | $38,226 | $39,557 |
| MS | $42,090 | $34,408 | $39,417 |
| WI | $44,450 | $36,558 | $39,268 |
| KS | $43,580 | $35,053 | $38,963 |
| SC | $41,990 | $35,371 | $37,961 |
| PA | $44,980 | $36,941 | $37,888 |
| WY | $39,930 | $34,264 | $37,715 |
| CO | $46,500 | $38,205 | $37,684 |
| NJ | $49,680 | $40,901 | $37,564 |
| NH | $46,450 | $39,503 | $37,498 |
| IN | $41,600 | $34,408 | $37,325 |
| ME | $44,370 | $36,156 | $37,237 |
| RI | $45,880 | $37,744 | $37,219 |
| WV | $40,020 | $33,292 | $37,085 |
| CT | $47,140 | $38,186 | $36,827 |
| OR | $49,480 | $38,158 | $36,438 |
| NV | $41,090 | $35,196 | $36,292 |
| MD | $46,470 | $37,675 | $36,238 |
| NM | $38,650 | $32,541 | $36,002 |
| AR | $36,850 | $30,884 | $35,701 |
| MO | $38,640 | $32,348 | $35,253 |
| KY | $38,080 | $31,562 | $34,888 |
| MA | $46,430 | $37,485 | $34,632 |
| CA | $46,370 | $38,448 | $34,151 |
| OK | $35,990 | $29,979 | $33,957 |
| IL | $41,360 | $33,510 | $33,898 |
| UT | $39,260 | $31,978 | $33,661 |
| AL | $36,750 | $30,148 | $33,509 |
| NC | $37,550 | $31,362 | $33,314 |
| NY | $43,720 | $35,545 | $33,027 |
| TN | $35,290 | $30,536 | $33,006 |
| AZ | $39,440 | $33,287 | $32,923 |
| FL | $38,740 | $33,308 | $32,196 |
| VA | $39,370 | $32,311 | $32,070 |
| GA | $37,380 | $30,948 | $32,005 |
| TX | $33,840 | $29,370 | $30,224 |
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 $43,380 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 Washington, at $44,749.
- 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 Texas, on $30,224.
- All wage figures for woodworking machine setters, operators, and tenders, except sawing are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $43,380. 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 woodworking machine setters, operators, and tenders, except sawing 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 $44,749, which leads in Washington.
- Real-terms results for woodworking machine setters, operators, and tenders, except sawing 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; Texas anchors the distribution at $30,224. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.