I would say, it pays more consistently than small jobs. As by nature small jobs are not generally continuous, most often piecemeal.

The other factors are: In any sort of manufacturing, the only time you are making money is when the equipment is making product.

If you are stopped for a change over or setup you are losing money. Changing over contains risk of improper setup, where you lose even more money since you produce unusable product.

Where I live, the local machine shops support themselves in two way: 1. Consistent volume work for an established customer. 2. Emergency work for other manufacturing sites: repair or reverse engineering and creating parts to support equipment(fast turn around and high cost)

They are willing to do small batches but lead times will be long since they have to work it into their production schedules.