Explore by Career/Production
Jewelers and Precious Stone and Metal Workers
Design, fabricate, adjust, repair, or appraise jewelry, gold, silver, other precious metals, or gems.
- Median pay
- $49,140
- per year
- 10-year outlook
- -5.5%
- Declining
- Typical entry
- High school diploma or equivalent
Key skills
- Quality Control Analysis
- Active Listening
- Speaking
- Critical Thinking
- Monitoring
- Reading Comprehension
- Social Perceptiveness
- Coordination
What they do
- Position stones and metal pieces, and set, mount, and secure items in place, using setting and hand tools.
- Smooth soldered joints and rough spots, using hand files and emery paper, and polish smoothed areas with polishing wheels or buffing wire.
- Create jewelry from materials such as gold, silver, platinum, and precious or semiprecious stones.
- Make repairs, such as enlarging or reducing ring sizes, soldering pieces of jewelry together, and replacing broken clasps and mountings.
- Clean and polish metal items and jewelry pieces, using jewelers' tools, polishing wheels, and chemical baths.
- Cut and file pieces of jewelry such as rings, brooches, bracelets, and lockets.
- Select and acquire metals and gems for designs.
- Compute costs of labor and materials to determine production costs of products and articles.
- Examine assembled or finished products to ensure conformance to specifications, using magnifying glasses or precision measuring instruments.
- Pierce and cut open designs in ornamentation, using hand drills and scroll saws.
Majors that lead here
No mapped majors yet.
Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (OEWS, Employment Projections) and O*NET, used under CC BY 4.0.