Plant Operator
Location
Elk Grove Village, IL
Wage
$22/hr
Employment Type
Full-time
Posted on September 2, 2026
Location
Elk Grove Village, IL
Wage
$22/hr
Employment Type
Full-time
Posted on September 2, 2026
Airgas is hiring a Plant Operator in Elk Grove Village, IL, responsible for safely operating equipment for the handling and production of packaged gas cylinders. The company is committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, offering a comprehensive benefits package.
At roughly $22/hr, this posting comes in about 31% below the $32/hr median for welding jobs across Illinois, where the middle half runs $27–$39/hr across 265 postings with published pay. Put another way, it pays more than about 8% of the comparable postings we have wage data for. That gap is worth raising directly — in a market this size there is normally room to negotiate toward the median, particularly if you already hold the certifications the posting asks for.
Elk Grove Village, IL currently has 5 other active welding openings besides this one, spread across 4 employers. 1 of them was added in the last week. Across Illinois as a whole we're tracking 371 other active welding openings from 240 employers. That's enough local activity to be worth comparing two or three offers before committing. Browse every welding job in Elk Grove Village, or widen the search to Illinois.
The most active employers in Illinois at the moment, by number of open welding reqs, are Staff on Site (13), S&C Electric Company (12), and Gerber Collision & Glass (11). Volume like that usually means either a genuine expansion or a staffing agency working several client sites — worth knowing which before you apply.
Within Illinois, the best-paying metros we track by median hourly rate are Chicago at $38/hr, Itasca at $36/hr, and Downers Grove at $36/hr. If you can relocate or commute, that spread is worth factoring in.
Pay figures are medians computed from live postings in the Welding Pros index, not from survey data, and they move as employers post. Plant Operator figures were last recalculated when this page was built.