The Datum Report

Occupation 8144 · Process, plant and machine operatives

Weighers, graders and sorters

Half of full-time weighers, graders and sorters in the UK earn more than £30,918 a year, and half earn less.

Weighers, graders and sorters weigh, grade and sort materials, goods and products.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic entry requirements. Training is typically received on-the-job, supplemented by short courses relating to the specific material or product being considered.

What the work involves

• examines hide, skins, leather, fabric, wool, rags, scrap metal, tobacco pipe bowls, fish, fibres, ceramics, produce and other goods
• assesses product quality visually and by touch, and grades according to weight, thickness, colour and other quality criteria
• ascertains material(s) required from order card, recipe, or specification and weighs and measures prescribed quantities accordingly
• uses balances, springs, weighing platforms, automatic scales and weighbridges to check the weight of goods, products and loaded vehicles
• records and calculates gross and net weight, checks delivery notes and prepares documents and labels for identification purposes
• operates machines to measure lengths of rolls of material and irregularly shaped materials such as leather or sheepskin

Also called

Grader (food products mfr) · Metal sorter · Selector (ceramics mfr) · Weighbridge clerk · Weighbridge operator

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for weighers, graders and sorters, 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

Assemblers (electrical and electronic products) · Assemblers (vehicles and metal goods) · Assemblers and routine operatives n.e.c. · Routine inspectors and testers · Sewing machinists · Tyre, exhaust and windscreen fitters