The problem is that he is the business owner. I could pay myself $8.00
and hour but, at the end of the year, my personal income tax bill would
be well over $100K if I took my profit as retained earnings. He's
probably an S-corp, too so if he's profitable, the money has to go
somewhere.


The money probably goes back into the business. Good CNC machines can
get extremely expensive very quickly and shops need to keep adding more
machines as they grow and upgrading older machines to compete with
everyone else.