The Datum Report

Occupation 8112 · Process, plant and machine operatives

Textile process operatives

Half of full-time textile process operatives in the UK earn more than £27,915 a year, and half earn less.

Textile process operatives operate machines to prepare natural and synthetic fibres for processing, spin and twist fibre into yarn, thread, twine, rope and other similar material, and estimate the quantities of colouring matter required for printing and dyeing fabrics.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic entry requirements. Training is typically provided on-the-job. NVQs/ SVQs relating to textile manufacture at levels 2 and 3 and apprenticeships are available.

What the work involves

• sets controls, starts machinery and monitors the passage of material processed
• replenishes the supply of input fibres, removes and replaces full output packages, cards and spools
• detects blockages, tangled thread, defective or broken material, and joins broken ends by hand or mechanical knotting
• checks quality of completed material, marks any flaws and removes badly damaged sections
• examines colour cards or specifications, estimates quantity of colouring material needed to print or dye fibre and calculates and mixes ingredients accordingly
• stretches, shrinks, brushes, dampens and presses fabric and shears or burns off protruding fabric fibres as required
• cleans and oils machine, detects and reports mechanical faults to technicians

Also called

Factory worker (clothing mfr) · Hosiery worker · Machinist (rope, twine mfr) · Process worker (textile mfr) · Spinner (paper twine mfr)

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for textile process operatives, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 4 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Chemical and related process operatives · Food, drink and tobacco process operatives · Metal making and treating process operatives · Plastics process operatives · Process operatives n.e.c.