Last Updated: July 4, 2026

Manufacturing Workweek Statistics 2026

Name: Manufacturing Workweek Statistics 2026
Creator: Manufacturing Lead Generation
License: https://manufacturingleadgeneration.com/terms/

The manufacturing workweek is one of the quickest ways to read the health of a plant. Headcount tells you how many people are on payroll. Hours tell you whether the floor is stretched, underloaded, or quietly paying for a capacity gap through overtime.

This report pulls together 88 source-backed data points on average weekly hours, production-worker hours, overtime, hourly earnings, weekly pay, durable goods, nondurable goods, and subsector-level workweek differences. The core data comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Employment Statistics program, distributed through BLS and FRED. Every table links back to the original source series.

40.3

Average weekly hours for all manufacturing employees in June 2026. Source

41.6

Average weekly hours for production and nonsupervisory workers. Source

4.1

Average weekly overtime hours for production workers. Source

$1,259

Estimated weekly production-worker pay in June 2026. Source

What's in This Report

Latest manufacturing workweek benchmarks
2016-2025 trend: hours, overtime, and weekly pay
Durable vs. nondurable goods workweeks
Manufacturing workweek by subsector
What the hours data means for plant leaders
Cite this report and source list

Latest Manufacturing Workweek Benchmarks

The headline number for June 2026 is simple: all manufacturing employees averaged 40.3 hours per week, while production and nonsupervisory workers averaged 41.6 hours per week. That gap is normal. Production workers are tied more directly to machine schedules, line coverage, maintenance windows, and weekend catch-up work.

The more telling number is overtime. BLS reported 4.1 average weekly overtime hours for manufacturing production and nonsupervisory employees in June 2026. That means overtime represented about 9.9% of the production-worker workweek. In a shop with tight margins, that is not a rounding error. It changes capacity planning, recruiting, safety, and quoted lead times.

Metric	Value	Period	Source
Average weekly hours, all manufacturing employees	40.3 hours	June 2026	Original series
Average weekly hours, production and nonsupervisory workers	41.6 hours	June 2026	Original series
Average weekly overtime, production and nonsupervisory workers	4.1 hours	June 2026	Original series
Average hourly earnings, all manufacturing employees	$36.71	June 2026	Original series
Average hourly earnings, production and nonsupervisory workers	$30.27	June 2026	Original series
Manufacturing employment	12.598 million jobs	June 2026	Original series
Average weekly hours, durable goods	40.8 hours	June 2026	Original series
Average weekly hours, nondurable goods	39.5 hours	June 2026	Original series

Key readout

A 40.3-hour all-employee workweek does not look extreme by itself. The pressure shows up when you separate production employees from the rest of payroll. Production workers were at 41.6 hours, and overtime was 4.1 hours. That combination usually points to schedule pressure, open roles, or a deliberate choice to cover demand with premium hours instead of adding headcount.

Manufacturing Workweek Trend, 2016-2025

The last decade shows why one monthly workweek number can be misleading. Manufacturing production workers averaged 42.1 hours per week in 2018, then fell to 40.7 hours in 2020 during the COVID shock. By 2025, the production-worker workweek had climbed back to 41.0 hours, while average production-worker pay reached $29.05 per hour. Sources: AWHMAN, AWOTMAN, and CES3000000008.

The payroll effect is bigger than the hours trend alone suggests. Production-worker hourly earnings rose from $20.44 in 2016 to $29.05 in 2025, based on the BLS/FRED series. Even though total hours were slightly lower in 2025 than in 2018, estimated weekly production-worker pay was about $285 higher than it was in 2018.

Year	All employee hours	Production hours	Overtime hours	Production hourly pay	Est. weekly production pay	Source
2016	40.82	41.87	4.29	$20.44	$855.75	BLS/FRED
2017	40.87	41.93	4.34	$20.88	$875.57	BLS/FRED
2018	41.05	42.12	4.55	$21.52	$906.42	BLS/FRED
2019	40.55	41.58	4.23	$22.13	$920.14	BLS/FRED
2020	39.78	40.73	3.71	$22.79	$928.48	BLS/FRED
2021	40.48	41.46	4.12	$23.80	$986.67	BLS/FRED
2022	40.12	41.07	3.99	$25.05	$1,029.00	BLS/FRED
2023	39.80	40.69	3.60	$26.35	$1,072.26	BLS/FRED
2024	39.84	40.68	3.60	$27.78	$1,130.35	BLS/FRED
2025	40.15	41.03	3.72	$29.05	$1,191.81	BLS/FRED

42.12

Average production-worker hours in 2018, the highest annual figure in this table. Source

40.73

Average production-worker hours in 2020, the low point in this ten-year period. Source

42.1%

Increase in production-worker hourly earnings from 2016 to 2025. Source

Durable Goods vs. Nondurable Goods Workweeks

Durable goods plants ran longer workweeks than nondurable goods plants in June 2026. BLS/FRED reported 40.8 average weekly hours for durable goods and 39.5 average weekly hours for nondurable goods. The 1.3-hour gap is meaningful across a large workforce.

Durable goods includes industries like fabricated metals, machinery, computer and electronic products, transportation equipment, furniture, and primary metals. These operations often deal with longer production cycles, larger order backlogs, capital equipment bottlenecks, skilled trades constraints, and weekend maintenance windows. Nondurable goods includes food, chemicals, paper, printing, textiles, petroleum, plastics, and related categories. Some nondurable plants run 24/7, but the aggregate workweek can be lower because the sector mix is different.

Why this matters for quoting and lead times

When durable goods hours rise faster than nondurable goods hours, industrial buyers often feel it as longer quote turnaround, longer lead times, more expediting fees, or tighter vendor capacity. A supplier running above 40 hours is not automatically unhealthy, but sustained premium hours can make delivery promises fragile.

Calculation	Formula	Result	Source
Production-worker weekly pay	41.6 hours × $30.27	$1,259.23 per week	Source
Overtime share of production workweek	4.1 overtime hours ÷ 41.6 total hours	9.9% of weekly hours	Source
Regular production hours	41.6 total hours minus 4.1 overtime hours	37.5 regular hours	Source
All-employee weekly pay	40.3 hours × $36.71	$1,479.41 per week	Source
Durable vs. nondurable gap	40.8 durable hours minus 39.5 nondurable hours	1.3 hours per week	Source

Manufacturing Workweek by Subsector

The average manufacturing workweek hides a lot of variation. Transportation equipment manufacturing posted 42.3 average weekly hours for all employees in June 2026, while furniture and related product manufacturing posted 39.1 average weekly hours. That is a 3.2-hour spread before you even look at overtime.

Production-worker hours widen the gap further. Transportation equipment production and nonsupervisory workers averaged 43.9 hours in June 2026, while furniture production workers averaged 38.7 hours. A salesperson, recruiter, ERP vendor, or staffing firm targeting these industries should not treat them as the same labor market.

Industry	NAICS	All employee hours	Production-worker hours	Production-worker pay	Source
Transportation equipment manufacturing	336	42.3 hours	43.9 hours	$38.57	BLS API
Primary metal manufacturing	331	41.6 hours	43 hours	$30.79	BLS API
Wood product manufacturing	321	41.1 hours	42.8 hours	$25.17	BLS API
Fabricated metal product manufacturing	332	40.8 hours	41.6 hours	$28.61	BLS API
Machinery manufacturing	333	40.4 hours	41.6 hours	$31.29	BLS API
Computer and electronic product manufacturing	334	39.8 hours	40.5 hours	$39.20	BLS API
Miscellaneous durable goods manufacturing	339	39.8 hours	40.5 hours	$26.77	BLS API
Food manufacturing	311	39.6 hours	Not available in this series	N/A	BLS API
Furniture and related product manufacturing	337	39.1 hours	38.7 hours	$24.69	BLS API

Subsector takeaways

Transportation equipment has the longest workweek in this sample, with 42.3 all-employee hours and 43.9 production-worker hours. That fits the operating reality of vehicle, aerospace, shipbuilding, rail, and parts production, where large programs, supplier coordination, tooling constraints, and launch schedules can push labor hours higher. Primary metals also runs long at 41.6 all-employee hours and 43.0 production-worker hours, which reflects the capital-intensive nature of mills, foundries, and related operations.

Computer and electronic product manufacturing sits at 39.8 all-employee hours, but production-worker pay in the selected BLS series is much higher at $39.20 per hour. That combination tells a different story than furniture, which shows 39.1 all-employee hours and $24.69 production-worker pay. The number of hours matters, but the cost of each hour matters just as much.

What Manufacturing Workweek Data Means for Operators

A longer workweek can be good news when demand is strong and the plant is choosing overtime because contribution margin is attractive. It can also be bad news when overtime is covering chronic vacancies, poor scheduling, machine downtime, late materials, or quality rework. The BLS data does not tell you which situation applies inside a specific plant. It tells you where to start asking better questions.

The first question is whether overtime is planned or reactive. Planned overtime tied to a known backlog is different from daily scrambling caused by missing parts, absenteeism, or a bottleneck machine. OSHA's worker fatigue guidance warns that fatigue can be associated with extended work hours and demanding schedules, and NIOSH training material explains that long hours and shift work can affect alertness and recovery. Sources: OSHA worker fatigue hazards and NIOSH long work hours training.

The second question is whether the overtime is concentrated. A plant-wide average of 4.1 overtime hours can hide one department at 10 hours and another at zero. If the overtime is concentrated around maintenance, quality, programming, setup, shipping, or a single production cell, the fix may not be another general operator requisition. It may be a scheduling rule, a skill matrix issue, cross-training, PM discipline, or a better handoff between sales and operations.

The third question is whether quoted lead times match actual labor capacity. If a supplier is winning work based on a 40-hour week but delivering it with a 44-hour production schedule, the quote book is underpricing risk. That gap eventually shows up as margin leakage, expedited freight, quality misses, or turnover.

When rising hours are positive

Rising hours can mean booked demand is healthy, capacity is being used efficiently, and the plant is earning enough margin to justify premium labor. This is strongest when overtime is scheduled, quality is stable, absenteeism is low, and lead times are still under control.

When rising hours are a warning

Rising hours are a warning when they come with missed shipments, supervisor burnout, higher scrap, more injuries, or weekend work that never seems to go away. In that case, the workweek is not a growth signal. It is a capacity problem wearing a payroll disguise.

How to Use These Benchmarks in Sales and Marketing

Workweek statistics are useful for manufacturers, but they are also useful for companies selling into manufacturing. If you sell staffing, recruiting, ERP, scheduling software, maintenance services, safety training, machine monitoring, tooling, automation, or outsourced production, hours data helps you identify where pain is likely to be real.

For example, a message to transportation equipment manufacturers can reference the 42.3-hour all-employee workweek and 43.9 production-worker workweek from the BLS June 2026 data. A message to fabricated metal manufacturers can use the 40.8 all-employee workweek and 41.6 production-worker workweek. A general manufacturing message that treats every subsector the same will sound thin by comparison.

The same logic applies to content. A page about reducing overtime, improving schedule adherence, or hiring production workers should not rely on generic claims about labor shortages. Use the actual workweek, overtime, pay, and subsector benchmarks. Buyers can tell when you have done the homework.

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Methodology

The main workweek figures come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Employment Statistics program. For national headline series, we used FRED pages from the St. Louis Fed because they provide stable public URLs and clean historical downloads for BLS data. For selected subsector rows, we used BLS public API URLs with the relevant CES series IDs and Jun 2026 observations.

Annual 2016-2025 rows are averages of monthly observations. Estimated weekly pay is calculated as average weekly hours multiplied by average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers. It is a benchmark, not a payroll audit. It does not include every premium, shift differential, bonus, fringe benefit, or employer tax.

We count each table row, highlighted metric, historical observation, and calculated benchmark as a data point. All cited source pages were accessed on July 4, 2026. If BLS revises CES data after publication, use the source links for the latest official figure.

Source labels and data definitions

The source systems use formal labels that readers may see when they graph and download economic data. The BLS tables describe employees on private nonfarm payrolls, private nonfarm payrolls by industry, private nonfarm payrolls by industry sector, and nonfarm payrolls by industry sector. In plain English, this page is about hours of work in the manufacturing sector, including seasonally adjusted average weekly hours, average hours, hours manufacturing, overtime hours, and earnings data series for 2021, 2022, 2024, 2025, and 2026. Manufacturing employment is included so the workweek benchmarks can be read beside the number of people on payroll. FRED source pages may use phrases such as download economic data for average weekly hours, economic data for average weekly hours, and data for average weekly hours because they mirror the establishment survey labels from BLS. When you see manufacturing employment seasonally adjusted Bureau of Labor Statistics or seasonally adjusted Bureau of Labor Statistics language, it points back to the same adjusted Bureau of Labor Statistics payroll survey. The current employment statistics survey appears in Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly news release tables, and some public-domain labels read Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly nation public domain or labor statistics monthly nation public domain. The labor force is separate from payroll employment, so this page uses payroll hours rather than household labor force estimates. Q1 2026 and later monthly data can be compared by percent change, hours per employee, and weekly pay per employee.

Cite This Manufacturing Workweek Report

Suggested citation:

Manufacturing Lead Generation. "Manufacturing Workweek Statistics 2026: Hours, Pay & Overtime Benchmarks." Updated July 4, 2026. https://manufacturingleadgeneration.com/manufacturing-workweek-statistics/

You may cite this page in articles, presentations, newsletters, and internal planning documents. Please link back to this URL and preserve the original source links when quoting specific BLS, FRED, OSHA, NIOSH, or Census figures.