Cut metal to a thousandth of an inch and make the parts everything else is built from.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
The median pay is about $58,750 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $39,200 at the lower end to about $80,010 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
1 to 4 years after high school, on the usual route.
$500 to $15,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
No. There is no license to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Limited demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$58,750
Bottom tenth
$39,200
Top tenth
$80,010
The national median is $58,750 a year, the bottom tenth earn $39,200 or less and the top tenth $80,010 or more, in the 2025 survey. Moving up usually means going from running somebody else's program to setting up jobs and reading prints yourself.
$18.85 to $22.87 an hour
The bottom tenth and bottom quarter of machinists, 2025
Operators and apprentices loading parts and running set programs are usually paid in this part of the range. Nearly everyone starts here, whether they came through a college certificate or straight off the street. The rate climbs as soon as you can set up a machine and inspect your own first article.
$47,570 to $67,700
Half of all machinists earn between these two figures, 2025, before shift differentials and overtime
Second and third shifts usually pay a differential. Machine shops run around the clock because the machines are expensive and idle machines earn nothing. Overtime is often available, paid at time and a half under federal law for hourly workers.
Roughly, all in
$500 to $15,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
A registered apprenticeship is paid work with no tuition, so the low end is your own precision measuring tools and a credential exam or two. The high end is a two year community college associate degree paid up front plus a fuller set of micrometers, gauges and indicators built up over your first years. This is one of the cheapest skilled trades in the country to enter, and a Pell Grant, federal aid that is never repaid, can cover a community college certificate outright.
This is one of the cheapest skilled careers in the country to enter. If you take the apprenticeship route there is no tuition at all, and a Pell Grant from the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) can cover a community college certificate outright.
Health insurance and retirement plans
Standard at anything larger than a small independent shop.
Employer paid training
Shops commonly pay for programming courses and credential exams to keep people.
Overtime
Often available, especially when a shop is busy.
Skills that move
A machinist who can set up and read a print can get work in any manufacturing town in the country.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Three routes in, and all of them end with the same hands-on skill.
High school diploma
Grade 12
Shop class if your school still has one, plus geometry and trigonometry. Both get used daily.
Pick your entry
Right after school
A community college machining certificate, a registered apprenticeship that pays from day one, or getting hired as an operator and learning inside the shop.
Learn to run and then set up machines
1 to 3 years
Running a job someone else set up is the entry level. Setting up your own, choosing tools and holding tolerance is the real skill.
Add programming
During or after
CNC (computer numerical control) programming and CAM (computer-aided manufacturing) software turn a machine operator into a machinist who can quote and plan a job.
Credential and specialize
Ongoing
Credentials from NIMS (the National Institute for Metalworking Skills) prove the skill on paper. Then move toward tool and die, mold making, inspection or aerospace work.
Geometry and trigonometry
Bolt circles, angles and tapers. This is the trade's everyday math.
Shop and drafting
Reading a technical drawing correctly is half the skill of the job.
Computer classes
Modern machining is programming as much as it is cutting.
Physics
Feeds, speeds, heat and tool wear all make more sense if you understand force and friction.
No state licenses machinists, and there is no exam standing between you and the job. What the industry uses instead is NIMS (the National Institute for Metalworking Skills), which sets national standards for the trade. Most of its credentials have two parts: a written exam on the knowledge, and a performance test where you actually machine a part to an industry drawing and it gets measured. That second half is why employers take the credential seriously. Registered apprenticeships in this trade are overseen by the United States Department of Labor and often run several years of paid work plus classroom instruction.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Tool and die making
Building the dies, molds and fixtures that mass production runs on. Often seen as the top of the trade.
Five-axis machining
Complex aerospace and medical parts. Fewer people can do it.
Swiss screw machining
Tiny high-volume precision parts, common in medical devices. A specialty of its own.
Quality inspection
Coordinate measuring machines and GD&T (geometric dimensioning and tolerancing). A route off the floor without leaving the trade.
Your own measuring tools
Micrometers, calipers and indicators you trust. Machinists buy them one at a time and keep them for a career.
CAD (computer-aided design) skills
Being able to open and read a model, not just a printed drawing.
Patience for setup
The cutting is quick. Getting the part held, trammed and offset correctly is the slow part, and it is where the skill lives.
Safety habits
Spinning metal, hot chips and coolant. Nobody in this trade is relaxed about eye protection.
Machining is one of the few trades where people genuinely do go out on their own. A used mill and lathe in a garage can take on prototype and repair work, and small shops build from there. The honest version: machine tools are expensive, work comes in unevenly, and you become a quoter, an inspector and a bookkeeper as well as a machinist. Most people who do it well spent a decade in someone else's shop first, learning what a job actually costs.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Start at 6am, check the job travelers and the drawings for what is running. Set up a machine: load the fixture, set tool offsets, touch off the part. Cut a first article, take it to the surface plate and measure everything the print calls out. Adjust, run the batch, check parts as they come off. In between, deburr, change worn inserts and keep the paperwork straight. It is quiet, focused, standing work with the constant background noise of other machines cutting.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Machinists talk in thousandths, and call them thou. A human hair is roughly two to four of them thick. Precision work routinely holds tolerances tighter than that, which is why the measuring tools cost more than some of the cutters.
Machining made interchangeable parts possible, and interchangeable parts made mass production possible. Every other manufacturing job downstream depends on someone having cut the first accurate one.
Structural aircraft parts are often machined from a solid block of aluminum, and a very large share of that block is cut away and recycled. The finished part is light because everything unnecessary was removed, one pass at a time.
O*NET OnLine (the Department of Labor's occupation database) projects slower than average growth for machinists between 2025 and 2035, with about 26,100 job openings a year, partly because machines now run unattended for long stretches. What did not go away is the person who plans the job, writes the program, sets the tools and proves the first part.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Metal and machining first, then the rest of the field. See every career in skilled trades.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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