The Datum Report

Occupation 8120 · Process, plant and machine operatives

Metal working machine operatives

Half of full-time metal working machine operatives in the UK earn more than £31,500 a year, and half earn less.

Metal working machine operatives operate machines to cut, shape, abrade and otherwise machine metal, use hand and power tools to remove surplus metal and rough surfaces from castings, forgings or other metal parts, and clean, smooth and polish metal workpieces.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic entry requirements. Training is typically received on-the-job. NVQs/SVQs in Mechanical Manufacturing Engineering are available.

What the work involves

• secures workpiece in drilling, boring, milling, planing, grinding, lapping, honing, electrochemical, or other shaping machines, or loads metal stock on to press
• sets controls, starts machine and operates controls to feed tool to workpiece or vice versa and repositions workpiece during machining as required
• withdraws workpiece and examines accuracy using measuring instruments
• operates burning, chipping and grinding equipment to remove defects from metal parts, and files, chisels, burns and saws off surplus metal
• smooths rough surfaces with hand tools, abrasive belts and wheels, compressed air, jets of vapour, or blasting with shot, grit, sand or other abrasive material
• selects and secures polishing head to machine tool, prepares head with emery, grease or other substance, sets speed and angle of polishing head, and operates controls to feed polishing head to workpiece or vice versa

Also called

Engineer (nos) · Machinist (metal trades) · Metal polisher · Process worker (metal trades) · Shot blaster

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for metal working machine 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. 10 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