Jecclr2003
Member
In our shop of 6 press operators and 3 prepress staff, the prepress people make $26.36 to $32.17 and press operators make 26.81 to $30.96. The mostly highly paid prepress person is a working supervisor and the most highly paid press operator is not. Our prepress people have to cover the entire range from desktop publishing to file checking to producing plates, and finding people skilled and willing to keep current across that range of activities is never easy.
That's kind of the set up we have here.
There's 2 of us in prepress (not making that kind of money, although I wish I could!) and 5 pressmen (2 on 40" 5 color, 2 on 26" 5 color and a 2 color operator that bounces around where needed.
I tend to touch the lion's share of the work with my partner who's been here 25 years handles the huge/really complicated projects that I'm not familiar with yet.
We both bring different things to the table and are both able to learn something from the other.
We cover the whole gamut.... publishing, file checking, plating, digital press setup, etc. It's a tough job and you need a thick skin as the finger always points back at you a LOT.