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Key statistics

The identity block — every fact is canon, none is generated.

1 of 8

Track

Individual contributor

Family rungs priced

P1 · P2 · P3 · P4 · P5 · P6

—

manufacturing

Coordinates

2 / 4 spaces

pay@2 · 2026-07

What this role is

Entry-level individual contributor who performs basic machine operation, assembly, and packaging tasks on a production line under routine supervision. At the Entry-Level Professional (P1) level, the role owns own tasks within a defined component, routine problems with known solutions, and drives own deliverables. None — building the craft.

What this level does

Supply, hold, and stage materials or tools for production workers and keep the work area and equipment clean under close supervision
Receive product from the production line and follow all process instructions, orders, and specifications exactly as issued
Rack and secure parts onto racks, hooks, and fixtures and prepare products for the next stage of the production cycle
Place raw materials or products into manufacturing machines to aid the assembly process on the running line
Prepare machinery and equipment for use and work the production line as instructed

Knowledge applied: Applies basic math for measuring and counting and follows explicit process instructions; learns machine feeding, racking, and housekeeping tasks on the job.
Complexity & problem solving: Handles routine, repetitive tasks with standard answers; refers anything unusual to a supervisor or lead.
Collaboration & interaction: Works alongside other production workers on a stable line, communicating simple status to keep material moving.
Typical experience: 0–1 years; entry-level, on-the-job trained, no prior manufacturing experience required.

Skills at this level

Machine and equipment operation: — Operates and sets up manufacturing machinery and assembly-line equipment, feeding materials and running the line to ensure efficient, on-spec production.
Blueprint and instruction interpretation: — Reads and interprets blueprints, process orders, and assembly instructions to build products to specification on assembly-focused lines.
Basic math: — Uses foundational arithmetic to measure, count, and verify quantities and dimensions during production and packaging tasks.
Teamwork and communication: — Works closely with fellow production workers and communicates line status and issues effectively to keep the production line moving.
Materials handling and staging: — Supplies, racks, secures, and stages raw materials, parts, and finished product on fixtures and machines to prepare each stage of the production cycle.
Production line setup: — Prepares, configures, and runs production machinery and assembly lines to defined procedures before and during a run.
Health and safety compliance: — Adheres to and enforces workplace health and safety standards on the production floor, maintaining clean workstations and ensuring safety compliance across the operation.
Quality control support: — Verifies output against specifications, identifies off-spec product, and supports quality control activities to hold production quality.
Production scheduling and workflow management: — Plans, sequences, monitors, and adjusts daily production workflows and staffing to meet output targets and deadlines.
Production planning and budgeting: — Plans production capacity and manages the area budget, allocating labor, machine time, and materials against targets.
Team supervision and training: — Supervises, trains, and develops production teams and supervisors to optimize efficiency and ensure consistent quality.
Production data analysis: — Analyzes production records and performance data across lines to diagnose yield, cycle-time, and downtime problems and drive improvement.
Lean and continuous improvement: — Introduces and institutionalizes lean manufacturing and continuous-improvement methods that raise plant-wide throughput, quality, and cost performance.
Manufacturing operations strategy: — Sets multi-site production policy and long-term capacity, technology, and capital investment strategy against global supply chain complexity.

Model-authored from 21 retrieved sources, then adversarially reviewed by an independent judge panel and held to a minimum-evidence floor before publication. Distinct from corpus-extracted content, which is labelled as such.

Pay across the ladder

Production — median with , by . Real canon data.

Pay figures are modeled estimates from our market equation — level-differentiated, with honest-wide bands. They refresh as new leveling evidence lands; treat per-role dollars as directional.

Demand — is the field growing, or just turning over?

Employment growth 2019–2024, BLS OEWSobserved

+8.6%First-Line Supervisors of Production and Operating Workers · United States

631,100 → 685,140 jobs

67,700 openings / year, split into:

replacement / exits 66,862

Growth — new jobs (1%)Exits — backfill (99%)

1% of hiring here is genuine expansion; the rest backfills people who move on.

Projected growth 2024–34 expanding: +1.2%
Growth share of hiring: 1%
Exit / retention pressure high: 99%
Openings / year: 67,700

Two quantities, kept apart: observed = employment growth differenced from two BLS OEWS vintages (what already happened); projected = BLS Employment Projections 2024–34, openings decomposed into growth + exits (growth derived from projected employment change). Neither is a pay figure.

Where this role sits — growth vs. pay

level P1 held

Demand axis is projected growth (not raw openings — that just measures churn). A curated, de-duplicated set of recognizable occupations held at this level; this role is highlighted.

Where it pays — by metro

OEWS metro median

San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA$106k

San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA$95k

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV$88k

Boulder, CO$87k

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA$87k

Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH$83k

Lexington Park, MD$81k

Trenton-Princeton, NJ$81k

Pay only — metro-level demand isn't in public data (it needs job postings). National median $64k; the demand-cube initiative will add growth-by-metro.

What changes across the ladder

Level-distinction canon isn't available for the adjacent levels of this profile yet.

Level differentiators

What separates P1 (P1 — Entry-Level Professional) from the levels around it — this level only. Every word is real canon for this profile.

Scope: Own tasks within a defined component
Autonomy: Close supervision; work reviewed frequently
Complexity: Routine problems with known solutions
Impact: Own deliverables
Decision rights: Few independent decisions; escalates the rest
Leadership: None — building the craft

Full level-by-level matrix (side by side across the ladder) lives on the Ladder drill-down — not here.

Promotion

The next rung from P1 is P2.

Performance criteria for this profile render in the assessment kit →

People also watch

Nearest coordinate neighbors — same , same level. Each row's (confident / review / no match) comes from its — computed, not curated.

Profile	Key	Median	Δ structural
VP of Production	jf_production::E1	$174,847	confident0.06
Production Supervisor	jf_production::M1	$88,342	confident0.06
Production Worker	jf_production::S1	$38,510	confident0.06
Production Technician	jf_production::P2	$74,658	confident0.06

Capability cluster

O*NET 51-1011

Core to this role. Click any element with an ⓘ for its O*NET definition. A job-specific capability model (SkillFrame) will sharpen this and add worked examples.

The Job Swatch

P1

jf_production::P1

Production Associate

Production

no content fingerprint

The swatch is JobFrame's core primitive: a hueset deterministically by the role's superfunction, the profileKey as its color code, the level ladder, and a content fingerprint. Two swatches that look alike are alike.

Because every role carries computable coordinates, similarity, leveling, and pricing become measurable instead of arguable— the whole point of "Pantone for jobs."

Structural

structural@1

Where it sits— position in the work taxonomy + level (weighted Gower, level > function > focus).

Track: P
Superfunction: manufacturing
Function: manufacturing_expansion
Family: production
Universal level: 1 / 8

Content

content@2

What it's about— a fingerprint over the role's tasks & capabilities.

No content fingerprint for this profile.

Two roles can sit far apart structurally yet be close in content — that gap is itself a signal.

3-state matching

How any two swatches compare — a real distance in coordinate space, resolved to a calibrated verdict (never a fake "94% match").

Chemistry, Manufacturing & Controls (CMC) · P1review0.17

Lean Manufacturing · P1review0.17

Machine Shop · P1review0.17

Maintenance · P1review0.17

Manufacturing Engineering · P1review0.17

Pilot Plant Operations · P1review0.17

Editions — frozen & versioned

structural@1live

Released 2026-06-17

content@2live

Released 2026-07-28

pay@2live

Released 2026-07-02

semantic@1live

Released 2026-07-02

Coordinates belong to a frozen, versioned edition — a coordinate computed today still means the same thing next quarter. Re-fitting issues a new edition, so comparisons are never silently redefined.

How to read this profile

Every number here is traceable — to a named source, a stated method, and an as-of date — and each value is labeled by how we know it: observed from data, computed by a model, projected forward, or governed canon. Nothing is a black box, and nothing is invented to fill a gap.

Where every number comes from

What	Source & method	Edition	State
Median pay + range	JobFrame pay equation (function base × family multiplier × level × focus differential)	pay@2	computed
Pay across the ladder	Same equation applied at each universal level	pay@2	computed
Demand — growth & openings	BLS Employment Projections; openings decomposed into growth + exits	EP 2024–34	projected
Pay by metro	BLS OEWS metropolitan medians	OEWS 2024	observed
Level distinctions	JobFrame universal-level canon (scope · autonomy · complexity · impact · decision rights · leadership)	canon	canon
Capability cluster	O*NET Knowledge / Skills / Abilities	O*NET 51-1011	computed
Coordinates	JobFrame coordinate system — structural (weighted Gower) + content fingerprint	structural@1 · content@2 · pay@2 · semantic@1	computed
Related roles	Nearest neighbors in the structural coordinate space	structural@1	computed

The principles behind the numbers

Ranges, not false precision

Pay is P10 · median · P90, never a single misleading number.

Three honest states, never a fake %

Role matches resolve to confident / review / no-match — a calibrated verdict, not a made-up percentage.

Provenance on every value

Each number carries whether it's observed, computed, projected, or canon — so you always know how much to lean on it.

Gaps shown as gaps

When a figure isn't available at the grain you need, we say so — we don't fabricate a number to fill the cell.

Frozen, versioned editions

Pay and coordinate editions are pinned, so a comparison you make today still means the same thing next quarter.

Privacy by min-N

Any aggregate over people is suppressed below a minimum count, so no individual is identifiable.

Freshness

As of2026-07-30Editioncanon-v2@2.1.0-completeSourcecanon-v2 cell + salary-benchmark (model)