What is a Machine Operater?
The average machine operater salary is $33,480. The most common degree is a high school diploma degree with an general studies major. It usually takes zero years of experience to become a machine operater. Machine operaters with a Forklift Safety and Inspector certification earn more money. Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow -11% and produce -203,300 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does a Machine Operater Do
There are certain skills that many machine operaters have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed color vision, math skills and technical skills.
How To Become a Machine Operater
If you're interested in becoming a machine operater, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 5.2% of machine operaters have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 0.6% of machine operaters have master's degrees. Even though some machine operaters have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Machine Operater Career Paths
As you move along in your career, you may start taking on more responsibilities or notice that you've taken on a leadership role. Using our career map, a machine operater can determine their career goals through the career progression. For example, they could start out with a role such as machine operator, progress to a title such as technician and then eventually end up with the title production supervisor.
Average Salary for a Machine Operater
What Am I Worth?
Roles and Types of Machine Operater
There are several types of machine operater, including:
Machine Operator
Role:
Some machine operators need training in order to operate certain machinery such as cranes and excavators. The hours you work as a machine operator can vary, but often include overtime, night shifts, and weekend shifts.
As a machine operator, you have lots of industries you could go into, from warehousing and storage to food manufacturing and construction. The list goes on and on. Depending on the industry, your work can take you outside or you may get to work inside.
- Average Salary: $32,874
- Degree: High School Diploma
Production Operator
Role:
Daily, a production operator is involved in activities such as undertaking product assembly, performing product packaging, maintaining the production line machinery, and achieving production line targets. Besides that, they also need to clean the production floor and comply with health and safety guidelines.
Employers require production operators to have a minimum of a high school diploma and have the stamina to stand on their feet during work operations. This role earns, on average, $14 per hour and suits individuals passionate about understanding assembly lines.
- Average Salary: $35,185
- Degree: High School Diploma
Assembling Machine Operator
Role:
However, they do not usually need a college degree. In fact, most assembling machine operators only have a high school diploma.
Assembling machine operators usually learn how to operate their machines through on-the-job training. It helps if they have a few years of mechanical experience before that in order to have a basic grasp of factory work. Once they are trained, assembling machine operators can earn an average salary of $24,568 a year.
- Average Salary: $31,275
- Degree: High School Diploma
States With The Most Machine Operater Jobs
Number Of Machine Operater Jobs By State
| Rank | State | Number of Jobs | Average Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ohio | 1,302 | $35,572 |
| 2 | California | 1,187 | $33,025 |
| 3 | Pennsylvania | 1,042 | $36,817 |
| 4 | Illinois | 999 | $34,863 |
| 5 | Texas | 879 | $29,358 |
| 6 | North Carolina | 845 | $32,125 |
| 7 | Wisconsin | 831 | $38,811 |
| 8 | Indiana | 783 | $35,917 |
| 9 | Minnesota | 782 | $36,233 |
| 10 | Georgia | 748 | $29,465 |
| 11 | Michigan | 691 | $34,138 |
| 12 | Florida | 652 | $27,746 |
| 13 | Tennessee | 580 | $27,867 |
| 14 | New York | 554 | $34,916 |
| 15 | Missouri | 454 | $34,724 |
| 16 | Massachusetts | 451 | $32,847 |
| 17 | Iowa | 388 | $33,545 |
| 18 | Kentucky | 350 | $33,387 |
| 19 | New Jersey | 323 | $33,188 |
| 20 | Virginia | 316 | $29,586 |
| 21 | South Carolina | 306 | $33,572 |
| 22 | Utah | 287 | $32,912 |
| 23 | Washington | 269 | $36,976 |
| 24 | Maryland | 263 | $34,859 |
| 25 | Oregon | 259 | $35,613 |
| 26 | Arizona | 233 | $30,600 |
| 27 | Alabama | 212 | $25,288 |
| 28 | Colorado | 210 | $32,908 |
| 29 | Kansas | 209 | $39,036 |
| 30 | Connecticut | 197 | $33,498 |
| 31 | New Hampshire | 186 | $32,800 |
| 32 | Nebraska | 167 | $30,907 |
| 33 | Maine | 124 | $35,535 |
| 34 | Nevada | 124 | $31,752 |
| 35 | Mississippi | 124 | $29,922 |
| 36 | Arkansas | 123 | $28,960 |
| 37 | Oklahoma | 118 | $26,444 |
| 38 | Louisiana | 95 | $26,432 |
| 39 | Idaho | 87 | $34,574 |
| 40 | South Dakota | 61 | $32,863 |
| 41 | Vermont | 60 | $32,449 |
| 42 | Rhode Island | 52 | $35,801 |
| 43 | Montana | 51 | $29,269 |
| 44 | West Virginia | 47 | $29,289 |
| 45 | Delaware | 40 | $34,916 |
| 46 | North Dakota | 39 | $35,550 |
| 47 | New Mexico | 28 | $29,773 |
| 48 | Alaska | 18 | $29,394 |
| 49 | Wyoming | 7 | $20,412 |
| 50 | Hawaii | 5 | $32,892 |
Top Skills For a Machine Operater
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 17.7% of machine operaters listed safety rules on their resume, but soft skills such as color vision and math skills are important as well.
Choose From 10+ Customizable Machine Operater Resume templates
Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Machine Operater templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Machine Operater resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.
Machine Operater Demographics
Machine Operater Gender Distribution
After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
- Among machine operaters, 26.8% of them are women, while 73.2% are men.
- The most common race/ethnicity among machine operaters is White, which makes up 61.0% of all machine operaters.
- The most common foreign language among machine operaters is Spanish at 69.4%.
Online Courses For Machine Operater That You May Like
1. Machine Learning Introduction for Everyone
This three-module course introduces machine learning and data science for everyone with a foundational understanding of machine learning models. You’ll learn about the history of machine learning, applications of machine learning, the machine learning model lifecycle, and tools for machine learning. You’ll also learn about supervised versus unsupervised learning, classification, regression, evaluating machine learning models, and more. Our labs give you hands-on experience with these machine...
See More on Coursera2. Supervised Machine Learning: Regression
This course introduces you to one of the main types of modelling families of supervised Machine Learning: Regression. You will learn how to train regression models to predict continuous outcomes and how to use error metrics to compare across different models. This course also walks you through best practices, including train and test splits, and regularization techniques. By the end of this course you should be able to: Differentiate uses and applications of classification and regression in the...
See More on Coursera3. Deploying Machine Learning Models in Production
In the fourth course of Machine Learning Engineering for Production Specialization, you will learn how to deploy ML models and make them available to end-users. You will build scalable and reliable hardware infrastructure to deliver inference requests both in real-time and batch depending on the use case. You will also implement workflow automation and progressive delivery that complies with current MLOps practices to keep your production system running. Additionally, you will continuously...
See More on CourseraHow Do Machine Operater Rate Their Jobs?
Top Machine Operater Employers
Most Common Employers For Machine Operater
| Rank | Company | Average Salary | Hourly Rate | Job Openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Avery Dennison | $37,600 | $18.08 | 4 |
| 2 | International Paper | $37,180 | $17.88 | 6 |
| 3 | NOV | $37,165 | $17.87 | 4 |
| 4 | Green Mountain Coffee Roasters | $36,577 | $17.59 | 4 |
| 5 | The Kraft Group | $35,964 | $17.29 | 5 |
| 6 | Dart Container | $35,488 | $17.06 | 5 |
| 7 | Aludyne | $34,966 | $16.81 | 5 |
| 8 | H P Pelzer Automotive | $34,899 | $16.78 | 4 |
| 9 | Pilgrim's | $34,880 | $16.77 | 4 |
| 10 | Tyson Foods | $34,789 | $16.73 | 9 |
Machine Operater Videos
