The Datum Report

Occupation 8131 · Process, plant and machine operatives

Paper and wood machine operatives

Half of full-time paper and wood machine operatives in the UK earn more than £30,360 a year, and half earn less.

Paper and wood machine operatives operate machines to treat and cut wood, to produce, treat and cut paper, paperboard, leatherboard, plasterboard and similar material, and to assemble and make wooden crates and containers.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic entry requirements. Training is typically provided on-the-job. NVQs/ SVQs/vocational qualifications in Fibreboard Operations at levels 2 and 3, and apprenticeships are available. NVQs/SVQs/vocational- qualifications in Wood Machining are available at levels 2.

What the work involves

• cuts and shapes wood using hand and power tools, assembles parts of wooden crates, barrels and other wooden containers using nails, bolts and staples, and fits metal strips and corner pieces to strengthen container as required
• examines job requirements, ascertains necessary ingredients and loads machines to beat, mix and crush wood, cork and pulp for further processing
• attends and operates ovens, kilns, milling, filtering, straining, calendering, coating, drying, finishing, winding and other machines to produce and/or treat wood, paper, paperboard, leatherboard and plasterboard
• sets and adjusts edge guides, stops and blades of cutting machine, threads material through rollers or loads into machine hopper, starts and monitors operation of machine, removes completed work and clears machine of waste material

Also called

Box maker (cardboard) · Guillotine operator (printing) · Machinist (paper goods mfr) · Sawyer · Wood machinist

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for paper and wood 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. 9 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

Energy plant operatives · Mining and quarry workers and related operatives · Plant and machine operatives n.e.c. · Printing machine assistants · Water and sewerage plant operatives