The Datum Report

Occupation 9139 · Elementary occupations

Elementary process plant occupations n.e.c.

Half of full-time elementary process plant occupations n.e.c. in the UK earn more than £29,619 a year, and half earn less.

Job holders in this unit group assist the work of machine operatives and perform a variety of manual tasks in foundries, engineering and allied trades and in other process and plant operations not elsewhere classified in minor group 913: Elementary process plant occupations.

How people enter it

No academic qualifications are required. On-the- job training is provided. NVQs/SVQs may be available in some areas.

What the work involves

• assists with the operation of furnaces and the preparation of castings
• assists in setting up attachments on plant and machinery, and operates saws, shears or other equipment
• conveys goods, materials, equipment, etc. to work area, assists in setting up machinery and equipment and prepares tools, lamps and other equipment for use
• assists operative to mark out, bend, drill, galvanise, coat and otherwise machine metal
• loads and unloads vehicles, trucks and trolleys
• removes finished pieces from work area, paints or fixes identification labels or markers on products or containers
• clears machine blockages, cleans machinery, equipment and tools, keeps work area tidy and clears waste and any spillages
• performs a variety of manual tasks in relation to the operation of coke ovens, boilers, blast furnaces and other engineering trades

Also called

Factory worker · Fitter’s mate · Labourer (engineering) · Material handler

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for elementary process plant occupations n.e.c., 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

Industrial cleaning process occupations · Packers, bottlers, canners and fillers