Patternmakers, Wood

Patternmakers, Wood (SOC 51-7032) earn a median $49,630 a year ($23.86 an hour) in the United States, with 220 employed as of May 2025; the highest-paying state is Pennsylvania.

What patternmakers, wood do

Wood patternmakers plan, lay out, and build wooden patterns used to form sand molds for metal castings. A pattern must be exact and must be made in sections that can be withdrawn cleanly from the sand. The worker reads blueprints, drawings, or specifications to determine pattern sizes and shapes and the machine setups needed, lays out the pattern on stock, and divides it into sections suited to the casting's shape. Parts are cut, then glued, nailed, doweled, bolted, or screwed together, and surfaces are planed, shaved, filed, scraped, and sanded to shape. Templates, straightedges, calipers, and protractors verify the dimensions of the completed pattern. Woodworking machines such as bandsaws and lathes are set up and operated to cut and shape the parts, and patterns are corrected to compensate for defects in castings. The foundry workers who pack sand around the pattern are mold makers, a different occupation.

Typical entry: According to O*NET, a high school diploma or equivalent is the most common level of education reported by workers in this occupation.

Also called: Forms Builder, Mold Forms Builder, Mold Maker, Pattern Engineer, Pattern Maker.

National wage percentiles, May 2025

Patternmakers, Wood: US hourly and annual wage percentiles, mean and employment, May 2025
Area	Basis	Percentile wage					Mean	Employment
Area	Basis	10th	25th	Median	75th	90th	Mean	Employment
United States	Hourly	$18.08	$19.79	$23.86	$28.53	$40.28	$26.08	220
United States	Annual	$37,600	$41,170	$49,630	$59,350	$83,780	$54,240	220

Annual wage at the 10th, 25th, 50th (median), 75th and 90th percentiles. The same numbers are in the table above.

Employment per 1,000 jobs and the location quotient are area measures; they appear in the state and metro tables below. To see what a wage in this range leaves after tax, use FastCalc's take-home pay calculator.

Where patternmakers, wood earn and work most

Five highest-paying states

Patternmakers, Wood: the five states with the highest median wage, May 2025
Area	Basis	Percentile wage					Mean	Employment	Jobs per 1,000	Location quotient
Area	Basis	10th	25th	Median	75th	90th	Mean	Employment	Jobs per 1,000	Location quotient
Pennsylvania	Hourly	$23.66	$24.10	$26.45	$26.89	$38.99	$27.77	**	**	**
Pennsylvania	Annual	$49,220	$50,120	$55,020	$55,920	$81,100	$57,760	**	**	**

Five states with the most jobs

Patternmakers, Wood: the five states with the highest employment, May 2025
Area	Basis	Percentile wage					Mean	Employment	Jobs per 1,000	Location quotient
Area	Basis	10th	25th	Median	75th	90th	Mean	Employment	Jobs per 1,000	Location quotient

Five highest-paying metropolitan areas

Patternmakers, Wood: the five metropolitan areas with the highest median wage, May 2025
Area	Basis	Percentile wage					Mean	Employment	Jobs per 1,000	Location quotient
Area	Basis	10th	25th	Median	75th	90th	Mean	Employment	Jobs per 1,000	Location quotient

Five metropolitan areas with the most jobs

Patternmakers, Wood: the five metropolitan areas with the highest employment, May 2025
Area	Basis	Percentile wage					Mean	Employment	Jobs per 1,000	Location quotient
Area	Basis	10th	25th	Median	75th	90th	Mean	Employment	Jobs per 1,000	Location quotient

Published medians, May 2021 to May 2025

BLS published a median annual wage of $46,920 for patternmakers, wood in May 2021 and $49,630 in May 2025, with employment of 210 and 220.

Patternmakers, Wood: median annual wage, median hourly wage and employment in each OEWS May release, United States, as published
Release	Median annual	Median hourly	Employment
May 2021	$46,920	$22.56	210
May 2022	$44,290	$21.29	330
May 2023	$48,630	$23.38	260
May 2024	$52,520	$25.25	180
May 2025	$49,630	$23.86	220

Median annual wage in each release, as published; a release without a published median has no point. The same numbers are in the table above.

BLS does not design OEWS as a time series: each release pools three years of samples, and occupational classifications, area definitions and estimation methods change between releases, so a difference between two releases is not a measure of change over time. The figures are shown as published, side by side, and nothing is computed from them. See how often OEWS is updated.

Every state, by median wage

1 states and DC publish a row for this occupation. A linked state has its own page with the within-state metro table and comparison; the others appear here only.

Rank	State	Median hourly	Median annual	10th pct (annual)	90th pct (annual)	Employment	Jobs per 1,000	Location quotient
1	Pennsylvania profile	$26.45	$55,020	$49,220	$81,100	**	**	**

Occupations in the same SOC broad group (51-7030), with their national median annual wage.

Part of Production Occupations. Compare any area in the wage explorer.

Source and notes

Data: BLS OEWS May 2025, released 2026-05-15. Cross-industry estimates, all ownerships. BLS page: OEWS 51-7032 Patternmakers, Wood.

**: Employment estimate not available.

Annual wages assume 2,080 hours a year at the hourly rate; occupations BLS publishes on one basis only show an en dash (–) on the other.
Employment is rounded to the nearest 10 by BLS. Where BLS withholds a cell, nothing is estimated in its place.
Published medians: national_M2021_dl.xlsx to national_M2024_dl.xlsx in oesm21nat.zip to oesm24nat.zip (BLS OEWS May 2021 to May 2024, national, cross-industry, all ownerships) and the May 2025 spine. Each release is shown as published; nothing is computed between them.

Sources

BLS Standard Occupational Classification 2018, definition of 51-7032, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (public domain).
O*NET 30.1 Database, 51-7032.00, National Center for O*NET Development, USDOL/ETA (CC BY 4.0).
OEWS May 2021 national estimates (oesm21nat.zip), US Bureau of Labor Statistics (public domain).
OEWS May 2022 national estimates (oesm22nat.zip), US Bureau of Labor Statistics (public domain).
OEWS May 2023 national estimates (oesm23nat.zip), US Bureau of Labor Statistics (public domain).
OEWS May 2024 national estimates (oesm24nat.zip), US Bureau of Labor Statistics (public domain).
OEWS May 2025 national estimates (oesm25nat.zip), the site's data spine, US Bureau of Labor Statistics (public domain).

Includes information from O*NET 30.1 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, used under the CC BY 4.0 license.

Description written 2026-10-17 in our own words from the sources above.