What a machine operator earns, by metro

A machine operator in Fort Collins-Loveland has a median wage of $79,800. In Aguadilla the median is $21,840. That is a 3.65-fold difference for the same job title, which is unusually wide even by the standards of a country this large — and it means a national average for this role is close to meaningless.

Pay is tightly banded

From $33,390 at the 10th percentile to $60,030 at the 90th is only 1.8×, which is narrow. Pay for machine operators is set more by structure than by individual outcome — scales, steps, licensure. That makes income predictable and makes the ceiling real: the way to earn materially more is usually to change role or location, not to out-perform within this one.

Why the range is 3.65× wide

The top of the table is spread across several states rather than concentrated in one, which points away from a pure cost-of-living story. Where a role pays 3.65× more in one market than another without a single expensive state dominating, the usual cause is local demand density — a few metros where the industry clusters and employers compete for the same small pool. The machine operator concentration table further down shows where that is happening.

Highest paying metros

Lowest paying metros

St. Joseph is the cluster

St. Joseph has 8.46× the national concentration of machine operators — the densest market in the country for this role, with 1,120 employed locally. Pay there is $50,930, which does not put it near the top of the pay table. Concentration and compensation are different things — a dense market is easier to get hired in and easier to move around within, but the competition that makes it dense also caps what employers need to offer.

Where the role is most concentrated

Largest employers by metro

Current openings

About this data

Figures come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics programme, May 2025 release, SOC code 51-9111. OEWS surveys employers, so it reports what is actually paid rather than what job advertisements claim, and it excludes the self-employed. Estimates are published for 456 of 528 metropolitan areas; the remaining 72 had too few survey responses for BLS to publish without risking disclosure, so they are absent here rather than estimated. For a specialised role that is normal. Read the methodology.