CAM programmer salary in 2025 has an official U.S. home, and it is not the drafter table. Computer numerically controlled tool programmers had a median annual wage of $68,120 in May 2025. The mean annual wage was $72,210. The median hourly wage was $32.75, and the mean hourly wage was $34.72. About 28,500 people were in the wage release. The handbook rounds the count to about 28,600.
That median sits just under the mechanical drafter median of $71,550. It is almost the same dollar figure as the all drafter median of $68,090, and that likeness is a trap. Programmers write the instructions that drive machine tools. Drafters define the part. The wages can match while the jobs do not. A person who does both is two occupations in one week, which is common and still not a blended official wage.
What the bureau says the programmer does
The handbook places these workers with metal and plastic machine workers, not with architects and engineers. Programmers develop the programs that control machining or processing of metal or plastic parts by automatic machine tools, equipment, or systems. Operators, who run the machines, are a larger and lower paid group. Their median was $50,690. The parent group of metal and plastic machine workers had a median of $47,700. Quoting that parent median for a CAM programmer throws away the one detailed number the handbook bothered to publish.
Programmers typically need postsecondary training. The wider machine worker group often enters with a high school diploma and learns on the job. That education line is closer to drafting school than to a machine operator's first week, which is another reason the wages separate.
| May 2025 median | Wage |
|---|---|
| Metal and plastic machine workers | $47,700 |
| CNC tool operators | $50,690 |
| CNC tool programmers | $68,120 |
| All drafters | $68,090 |
| Mechanical drafters | $71,550 |
| Mechanical engineers | $104,110 |
The programmer mean of $72,210 is above the median, as usual. The parent group's highest 10 percent earned more than $69,790, which is barely over the programmer median, because the parent group is mostly operators and other machine jobs. Do not use that parent tenth as the programmer tenth. The handbook does not publish a programmer only tenth.
CAD and CAM are neighbors, not synonyms
A mechanical designer in SolidWorks who never posts code is not this occupation. Their comparison is the drafter median or the engineer median, depending on the decisions they own. SolidWorks designer salary 2025 and mechanical drafter salary 2025 cover that side. Mastercam, Fusion, NX CAM, and the CAM tools inside SolidWorks are how programmers work. The survey does not price the brand. It prices the act of programming the machine.
Shops often want one person to model the fixture and program the part. That person can reasonably look at both $71,550 and $68,120 and notice they are close. The engineer median of $104,110 is not the third number in that pair. Programming a toolpath is not mechanical engineering in the occupational sense, even when the program prevents a crash that would have been expensive. CAD technician salary 2025 is the other title shops use for this hybrid, and it points back to drafters or to engineering technicians, not automatically to this programmer wage.
Where the occupation sits in the wider outlook
The handbook's outlook for metal and plastic machine workers as a group is a decline of 7 percent from 2025 to 2035. That group median is $47,700 and includes many occupations that are not programmers. A group decline is not a sentence you can paste onto CAM programming without the detailed projection, and the detailed programmer projection is not broken out as its own story in the pages used here. What is safe to say is that programmers are a small skilled slice, about 28,600 jobs, inside a production workforce the bureau expects to shrink overall.
Drafter projections are similarly sober. Mechanical drafters are projected to fall 6 percent. Modeling and programming both face tools that automate routine choices. The May 2025 wages can still be solid. A shrinking projection is about future headcount, not a discount on the current median.
Using the figure
If you write programs for mills, lathes, and other automatic tools, $68,120 is the middle of the official occupation. If you only build the CAD model and hand it to a programmer, use the mechanical drafter median and leave this one alone. If you do both, say both numbers and resist averaging them into $69,835. The average of two medians is not a median of people who hold two jobs.
Entry routes differ from drafting. Entry level CAD salary 2025 is about the drafter tenth, under $46,700, which is not a CAM starting wage. A new programmer is entering a production occupation whose middle is already $68,120 and whose operators sit near $50,690. Those are the two production posts. The drafter bottom tenth is a different workforce.
Sources
- Occupational Outlook Handbook, Metal and Plastic Machine Workers. Programmer duties, education, and May 2025 medians.
- Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Programmer mean, median hourly wage, and employment.
- Occupational Outlook Handbook, Drafters. Mechanical drafter median.