Paper and Wood Machine Operatives Salary — UK & US Data (2025)

What This Job Involves

Set up, operate, or tend woodworking machines, such as drill presses, lathes, shapers, routers, sanders, planers, and wood nailing machines. May operate computer numerically controlled (CNC) equipment.

Typical duties, per the US Department of Labor's O*NET occupational database (mapped to this role's closest US equivalent, Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing):

• Set up, program, operate, or tend computerized or manual woodworking machines, such as drill presses, lathes, shapers, routers, sanders, planers, or wood-nailing machines.
• Examine finished workpieces for smoothness, shape, angle, depth-of-cut, or conformity to specifications and verify dimensions, visually and using hands, rules, calipers, templates, or gauges.
• Start machines, adjust controls, and make trial cuts to ensure that machinery is operating properly.
• Monitor operation of machines and make adjustments to correct problems and ensure conformance to specifications.
• Examine raw woodstock for defects and to ensure conformity to size and other specification standards.
• Adjust machine tables or cutting devices and set controls on machines to produce specified cuts or operations.

Source: O*NET OnLine, 51-7042.00 (US Dept. of Labor, public domain). Task duties describe the US-classified equivalent role and may vary slightly from UK practice for the same job title.

UK Regional Breakdown

Regions without published data for this occupation are omitted (ONS suppresses small samples).

Salary in Context

Within process, plant & machine operatives as a whole (19 occupations tracked on this site), paper and wood machine operatives pays about 3% below the average median for the category, ranking 12 of 19 by median pay. That's useful context if you're weighing this role against a lateral move within the same broad field, rather than against occupations with a completely different pay structure.

Location makes a real difference here: Scotland pays around 26% more than South East for this same occupation, based on the regional breakdown above. If you're able to work remotely or are open to relocating, that gap is often larger than a typical annual pay rise.

The spread between the 25th and 75th percentile — roughly the band most people in this role actually fall into — is about 43%. A narrower spread suggests pay for this role is fairly standardised across employers; a wider one suggests more room to negotiate, or a role where employer type and seniority matter more than average.

US Salary Overview

In the United States, the equivalent occupation (Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing, SOC 51-7042) has a national median wage of $43,380 per year according to BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025). Around 61,000 people are employed in this occupation in the US. Figures are shown in local currency and are not converted.

US Top States by Median Salary

See the full US state-by-state breakdown for paper and wood machine operatives →

Related Jobs

Work out what this salary means after tax with our take-home pay calculator.

What Affects Pay for Paper and Wood Machine Operatives, and How to Use This Data When Negotiating

The figures above describe the market, not any one employer's ceiling. A few things generally explain where an individual lands within that range:

• Location: Pay for the same job title can vary by tens of thousands depending on region or state — see the location breakdown on this page for this specific role.
• Experience level: The gap between the 10th and 90th percentile mostly reflects years of experience and seniority within the role, rather than employer generosity alone.
• Employer size and sector: Larger organisations and higher-paying sectors tend to sit above the median for a given role; smaller employers and some non-profit or public-sector employers often sit below it.
• Qualifications and certifications: Professional qualifications relevant to a role can shift where someone lands within the percentile range, particularly in regulated or technical occupations.
• How common the role is: Roles with fewer people employed nationally tend to show wider pay variation than high-volume occupations, simply because the underlying sample is smaller and less standardised.

If you're using this page to prepare for a pay conversation, a few practical steps:

• Bring the actual percentile figures from this page into the conversation — a specific, sourced number ("the median for this role is £X") carries more weight than a general sense that you're underpaid.
• If you have several years of experience or a scarce skill set, anchor to the 75th percentile rather than the median — the median describes the middle of the market, not where an experienced hire should expect to land.
• Use the regional or state figure, not the national one, if your employer benchmarks pay nationally but you're based in a higher-paying area — the location breakdown above is the more relevant number to quote.
• Treat total compensation, not just base salary, as the real comparison — pension contributions, bonus structure and benefits can close a gap that base pay alone doesn't show.
• Time the conversation around a review cycle or a clear recent win, and bring both arguments — the market-rate evidence on this page and your own contribution — together rather than either alone.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the average salary for a paper and wood machine operatives in the UK?

The UK median is £29,640 per year (gross, before tax), based on ONS ASHE 2025 (provisional) data. The mean is £29,847.

Does location affect paper and wood machine operatives pay in the UK?

Yes — regional pay varies materially for this occupation. Scotland has the highest median at £32,794, while South East has the lowest at £25,929, a gap of roughly 26%. See the regional breakdown above for every area with published ONS data.

How does the US salary compare?

The equivalent US occupation (Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing) has a national median of $43,380 per year (BLS OES May 2025). Figures are in local currency and not converted.

Where This Data Comes From

The UK figures on this page come from the Office for National Statistics' Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), the UK government's official annual employer survey of pay — not a self-reported salary site, and not a jobs-board average of advertised (rather than actually paid) salaries. The US figures come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OES) programme, the US equivalent: a large-scale survey of employers rather than job seekers. Both are gross figures — before income tax, National Insurance, or US federal/state tax and FICA — for the reason that gross pay is what's actually comparable across employers and locations; take-home pay depends on each person's own tax situation.

UK occupations are classified under the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) 2020, and US occupations under the equivalent US SOC system — the two classification systems don't map perfectly onto each other, so where this page shows a UK and a US occupation together, that pairing is our own editorial best match for the closest equivalent role, not an official government cross-reference. See About & methodology for the full data-sourcing notes that apply across every page on this site.

Data: ONS ASHE Table 14/15, 2025 provisional · BLS OES, May 2025 · Page built 2026-10-25