Plant machinery mechanics: $64,100 median, 547,300 jobs, +14%

There is no BLS occupation called robot maintenance technician, so wage claims about robot upkeep have to borrow from a broader line. Industrial machinery mechanics, maintenance workers, and millwrights is that line, and it covers far more than robots: pumps, conveyors, presses, and packaging gear all sit inside the same $64,100 median.

A median is the midpoint, not what any single worker earns. BLS puts the lowest 10 percent under $45,760 and the highest 10 percent above $94,530, and the spread by state, industry, and shift is wide. Quote the median as a center of gravity, and expect real offers above and below it.

The 14% growth and the 78,900-job gain are projections over a ten-year window, not booked hires. They rate a notch lower for citation because outlook figures get revised as the labor market moves, while the wage and the current employment count are measured.

Cite the pay as a $64,100 median, or $30.82 an hour, from the BLS, and label it as the broad machinery-maintenance line rather than a robot-only wage. Naming the occupation up front is what makes the figure defensible when someone checks it.

Give the survey vintage for the wage and the projection window for the growth, since the BLS updates the two on different clocks. Pairing a current-year wage with a decade-long outlook without saying so is where these citations usually slip.

Watch the denominator: 547,300 jobs and 78,900 added positions cover all machinery maintenance, so do not present them as a count of robot technicians specifically. The robot-only slice is smaller and is not something the BLS breaks out.

Selling $64,100 as a robot-technician salary. It is the median for a much broader maintenance occupation that spans most plant equipment.

Treating the median as a floor or as a top-of-scale figure. It is the midpoint, with wide spread around it by region, industry, and shift.

Quoting the 14% growth without the ten-year window, which makes a decade-long projection sound like a current-year jump. Growth over a decade and growth in one year are different claims, and only one of them is what the BLS printed here.

We opened the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook entry for industrial machinery mechanics, machinery maintenance workers, and millwrights and matched each value in its text: the $64,100 median, the $30.82 hourly rate, 547,300 jobs, 14% projected growth, the 78,900-job change, the decile range and the annual openings.

The measured figures, wage and current employment, rate High. The decade projection and its job-count change rate Medium, because the BLS revises outlook numbers as conditions shift and today's estimate can move.

We treated this line as a proxy on purpose and said so, rather than implying the BLS tracks robot maintenance as its own occupation. It does not, and the honest move is to name the broader occupation the number actually describes.

Refreshed in October 2026 for the Handbook's May 2025 wages and 2025 to 2035 projections; the previous version reported a $63,510 median, 538,300 jobs and 13% growth. This combined line is larger than the industrial machinery mechanics occupation alone, which O*NET reports separately and which our page on robot maintenance pay uses.