Manufacturing Average Weekly Earnings by Industry 2026

What this manufacturing earnings data measures

BLS average weekly earnings are not a salary survey. They are payroll survey estimates from the Current Employment Statistics program, which measures jobs, hours, and earnings from establishment payroll records. For this resource, the key measure is production and nonsupervisory employee average weekly earnings. BLS explains in its CES overview that the program produces average hourly earnings, average weekly hours, and, for manufacturing industries, related hours and earnings measures.

The practical reading is simple. Weekly earnings combine rate and schedule. A sector can pay a high weekly wage because the hourly rate is high, because the average workweek is long, or because both are true. In June 2026, manufacturing overall posted $30.27 in average hourly earnings and 41.6 average weekly hours, producing $1,259.23 in average weekly earnings.

Use this data carefully. It is not adjusted for cost of living, worker age, overtime mix, plant size, union status, or skill level. It is still one of the cleanest ways to compare weekly pay pressure across manufacturing subsectors because the source, method, and update schedule are consistent. If you sell recruiting, training, automation, software, maintenance, or lead generation into factories, weekly earnings are a useful signal of labor cost pressure and the value of each hour saved.

Key findings from the 2026 manufacturing pay data

Transportation equipment is the weekly pay leader in this dataset. Production and nonsupervisory workers in transportation equipment averaged $1,693.22 per week in June 2026. That number reflects both a high hourly rate, $38.57 per hour, and a long workweek, 43.9 hours. This category includes large, technical, and supply-chain-heavy manufacturing work such as motor vehicles, aerospace products, ships, and related equipment.

Computer and electronic products came next at $1,587.60 per week. The growth story there is even sharper. The 2019 annual average in the same BLS weekly earnings series was $1,020.67, which means the June 2026 level was 55.5% higher than the 2019 average. Semiconductor investment, electronics demand, and technical labor needs all show up in pay pressure.

Chemical manufacturing also sits near the top. Production and nonsupervisory workers averaged $1,394.16 per week, with $32.65 hourly earnings and 42.7 weekly hours. For suppliers selling into chemical plants, that pay level often pairs with compliance requirements, maintenance intensity, and long approval cycles.

The lower end of the table is not weak work. It is different work. Furniture and related products averaged $955.50 per week, printing and related support averaged $983.37 per week, and food manufacturing averaged $994.28 per week. These sectors often have more fragmented plants, thinner margins, different labor mixes, and fewer premium technical positions than aerospace, electronics, chemical, or transportation equipment manufacturing.

Durable goods versus nondurable goods

The durable versus nondurable split is one of the cleanest reads in the BLS data. Durable goods production and nonsupervisory workers earned $1,354.92 per week in June 2026. Nondurable goods workers earned $1,115.45 per week. That leaves a $239.47 weekly gap before cost of living, overtime mix, job mix, or region are considered.

The hourly rate tells the same story. Durable goods averaged $32.26 per hour, while nondurable goods averaged $27.14 per hour. Durable goods also had a slightly longer week at 42.0 hours versus 41.1 hours for nondurable goods.

This matters for sales targeting. A manufacturer with higher weekly pay often has more expensive downtime. If one hour of labor costs more and the plant is already running a longer schedule, a supplier that cuts setup time, reduces rework, improves yield, or fills skilled roles faster can make a stronger economic case. The same product can have a different payback period in transportation equipment than in furniture, even when both are valid manufacturing markets.

Weekly earnings growth since 2019

Looking back to 2019 gives a better sense of how much labor cost pressure has built into manufacturing. Manufacturing overall rose from a 2019 annual average of $920.11 to $1,259.23 in June 2026, a 36.9% increase. Durable goods climbed 40.1% over the same comparison, while nondurable goods increased 32.0%.

Some sector moves are much larger. Computer and electronic products increased 55.5% from the 2019 average to June 2026. Electrical equipment and appliances increased 46.3%, transportation equipment increased 44.0%, and wood products increased 40.8%. Those increases are not abstract. They affect quoted shop rates, overtime sensitivity, hiring plans, automation payback, and the price a plant can afford to pay for fewer defects.

Paper manufacturing is the slowest growth category in this dataset. It rose from a 2019 annual average of $945.90 to $1,161.77 in June 2026, a 22.8% increase. Primary metals grew 29.0%, machinery grew 29.2%, and chemical manufacturing grew 30.8%. A slower increase does not mean the sector is easy to hire for, but it does mean the wage curve is different.

How to use these benchmarks in manufacturing sales and planning

Weekly earnings are a blunt instrument, but useful blunt instruments belong in the toolbox. If you sell automation, robotics, scheduling software, industrial staffing, contract labor, training, maintenance, safety programs, or quality systems, the hourly and weekly earnings columns help you estimate the dollar value of labor time. A five-minute setup reduction looks small until you apply it to a plant with a high hourly rate, overtime, constrained skilled labor, and multiple shifts.

The pay table can also shape market selection. Transportation equipment at $1,693.22 per week and computer and electronic products at $1,587.60 per week usually support more technical sales motions. Buyers may expect formal ROI models, engineering proof, security reviews, and longer purchasing cycles. Furniture at $955.50 per week and printing at $983.37 per week may need a faster payback case and a simpler implementation path.

Recruiters can use the same data to sanity-check compensation conversations. A shop that is trying to hire experienced people in a subsector with double-digit weekly earnings growth is competing against the market, not just the plant down the road. In June 2026, electrical equipment and appliances had 11.0% year-over-year weekly earnings growth, transportation equipment had 9.8%, and nonmetallic mineral products had 8.1%. That is the kind of wage pressure that changes retention math.

Industrial marketers can use earnings data for segmentation. Higher-pay sectors tend to support bigger account values, stronger ROI narratives, and more specialized content. Lower-pay sectors can still be excellent targets, especially for consumables, local services, entry-level training, safety, packaging, and low-friction productivity tools. The point is not to chase only the highest wage industries. The point is to match the offer, proof, and pricing to the economic reality of the plant.

Methodology

We pulled seasonally adjusted BLS Current Employment Statistics data for production and nonsupervisory employees. The primary weekly earnings measure uses BLS data type 30. Hourly earnings use data type 08. Weekly hours use data type 07. Annual averages shown for 2019, 2024, and 2025 are simple averages of the 12 monthly values in each BLS series. June 2026 values are the latest available values at the time this page was updated and are marked preliminary by BLS where applicable.

BLS defines the Current Employment Statistics program as a monthly establishment survey covering employment, hours, and earnings from payroll records. The CES program overview explains the scope of all employees, production and nonsupervisory employees, average hourly earnings, average weekly hours, and manufacturing-specific hours measures. The BLS Employment Situation Table B-8 is the public table for production and nonsupervisory employee average hourly and weekly earnings by industry sector.

Some manufacturing subsectors have BLS payroll employment series but do not publish every seasonally adjusted earnings measure at the same level of detail. For that reason, this page includes the manufacturing sectors with available, current seasonally adjusted production and nonsupervisory weekly earnings, hourly earnings, and weekly hours series. We did not fill gaps from private salary surveys because this page is meant to stay tied to one consistent government source.

Chart notes and release notes

If you're building your own chart from this page, use the source links in the table instead of copying numbers from a screenshot. Each BLS series page lets you change the date range, export the monthly values, and compare the latest release against older months. The same source table is formally titled average hourly and weekly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls by industry sector, seasonally adjusted. That title is a mouthful, but it matters because it tells you exactly who is counted.

The data does not cover all workers in the United States. It covers employees on private nonfarm payrolls in the selected industry series, and this resource focuses on manufacturing. When people talk about weekly earnings of production workers, weekly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees, or earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees, they are usually referring to this BLS CES family of measures. The St. Louis Fed, through FRED, also republishes many BLS series, including manufacturing average weekly earnings, but BLS remains the original source for the figures used here.

The Jun 2026 numbers are useful because they are fresh enough to reflect the current labor market, while the 2019, 2024, and 2025 averages give the page enough history to keep one noisy month from driving the whole story. We included construction in the source note only as a reminder that the BLS CES system covers many industry groups outside manufacturing. This page does not mix construction wages into the manufacturing table.

For anyone using this data in a report, the safest wording is: "BLS Current Employment Statistics data for average weekly earnings of production and nonsupervisory manufacturing employees." That phrasing is specific enough for a footnote and plain enough for a board slide. It avoids the common mistake of calling the number an average manufacturing salary, which it is not. Salary data usually refers to annual pay for occupations or workers. This data is a weekly payroll earnings benchmark for industry groups.

The underlying data series are U.S. private sector payroll measures from the current employment statistics survey. In BLS wording, the monthly figures are employment seasonally adjusted Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates, and the earnings columns are seasonally adjusted Bureau of Labor Statistics payroll measures. You may also see a Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis page that says "download economic data for average weekly earnings" or "economic data for average weekly earnings" because FRED mirrors many BLS time series for researchers. That mirror is useful for charts, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly release is the original source.