Skilled trades
What does a Machinist or Toolmaker do?
Installing and repairing the things buildings and equipment depend on, mostly on site and mostly with your hands.
What the day is like
- Indoors, under a roof.
- Tools, materials, your body.
- Largely on your own.
- Right or wrong, to a standard.
- The same shape each day.
- Answerable for your own work.
The facts
- Pay
- $59,620 a year, median
- Machinists and Tool and Die Makers, May 2025
- Usually needs
- Varies; see the handbook page
- A year or two, often while earning something.
- Jobs
- -1% projected change in jobs, 2025-2035 projections
- Demand looks shrinking
What is good about it
- You answer for your own work rather than for other people, which suits more people than admit it.
- You can see what you did at the end of the day.
What people find hard about it
- Standing at a machine for hours
- Tolerances that leave no room for error
- Shift work
Employment is expected to shrink slightly, so the skilled end of the trade is the safer end.
Will machines take this job?
Hard for machines to take over. Physical work in changing spaces is the hardest kind for machines to take over; the paperwork around it is not.
How to find out whether it suits you
Visit a machine shop and set up one simple part from a drawing.
Would this actually suit you?
CareerDNA works that out from what you choose rather than from what you say about yourself: two minutes of choosing between real jobs, a few puzzles, and some questions about what you are like. It is free, it saves as you go, and it will tell you plainly where the answer is thin.