Bucking the salary trend: Industry Trends & Analysis

While average weekly earnings among production and nonsupervisory manufacturing workers continued an upward trend over the past 12 months — as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Cutting Tool Engineering found a drop in pay for 9 of 11 positions studied by our biennial salary and benefits survey.

BLS reported in June that its preliminary estimate for the average weekly pay among manufacturing workers reached $1,127.71 in May. A year earlier, the average weekly paycheck was at $1,066.51. As helpful as the BLS metric is at helping to gauge the economic health of the industry, the CTE survey parses out average pay for each of the following positions: manual machinist, CNC machinist, programmer, tool and die maker, tooling and manufacturing engineer, design engineer, project engineer, shop supervisor, engineering supervisor, plant manager and corporate manager.

Based on our 2024 survey results, just two positions saw an increase in pay compared to our 2022 survey results — tooling and manufacturing engineers and shop supervisors. Tooling and manufacturing engineers reportedly make $69,340 a year on average nationally, while shop supervisors make $70,126. The salaries represent a 0.8% and 2.0% increase in pay, respectively, since 2022.

The salary and corresponding percentage
decrease in pay since 2022 for the remaining positions follows:

Manual machinist — $43,842, down 4.2%,

CNC machinist — $50,859, down 2.8%,

Programmer — $62,322, down 0.3%,

Tool and die maker — $55,957, down 5.4%,

Design engineer — $68,192, down 3.7%,

Project engineer — $71,495, down 3.3%,

Engineering supervisor — $83,750, down 2.3%,

Plant manager — $99,130, down 2.2%,

Corporate manager — $124,156, down 8.6%.

Our survey results appear to buck the upward trend of manufacturing salaries that’s largely attributed to the ongoing labor shortage. After closer analysis, however, the decrease in salaries is more likely due to several factors. For starters, let’s remember that the COVID-19 pandemic led to a drop in manufacturing salaries across all 11 positions tracked by the 2020 CTE salary and benefits survey. That set the stage for our 2022 survey to show healthy rebound in manufacturing salaries across the board.

Part of that rebound, as we now know, was due in large part to the uptick in manufacturing production during the pandemic. BLS statistics for seasonally adjusted average weekly hours worked among all manufacturing employees supports this conclusion.

By April 2020, according to BLS data, the average number of hours worked among manufacturing employees was 38, a distinct drop from the previous month’s report of 40.3 hours.

The pandemic’s negative impact eased somewhat just a few months later that year when the average number of hours worked each week climbed from 39.7 in July to 40.1 in August. The average number of hours worked per week remained healthy for the next two years, hovering anywhere from a low of 40.1 to a high of 40.6 hours.

Still, BLS data for 2023 reveals a steady decline from a 40.5-hour work week in January to 40.0 hours per week in October of that year. The average hourly work week dropped to 39.9 in November and to 39.8 in December.

The average number of hours worked in January of this year remained at 39.8, then climbed back to 40.0 hours in February and March. Preliminary BLS data for April and May 2024 show a return to a 40.1-hour work week.

Overtime hours worked in manufacturing followed a similar pattern during this time frame, according to BLS, with weekly overtime reaching a high of 3.6 hours in February 2022. Weekly overtime hours then fluctuated between 2.9 and 3.0 from June to September 2023. Weekly overtime hours remained under 3 hours the last three months of that year, and into January 2024. Then, after an uptick to 3.0 hours of weekly overtime recorded in February of this year, overtime dropped back to 2.9 hours in March. From April to May 2024, preliminary BLS data shows that weekly overtime hours went from 2.9 hours to 3.0 hours.

In short, production slowed down.

Certainly this is not the first time manufacturing paychecks have shrunk, as indicated in the historical chart showing CTE survey results from 2002 through 2024.

Another factor impacting the 2024 CTE salary and benefits report is the variation in our survey sample since 2020. Our sampling of companies with 1 to 19 employees went from 26% in 2020, to 22% in 2022 and to 17% in 2024. Respondents from companies with 20 to 99 employees was at 21% in 2020 and at 30% in both 2022 and 2024. And companies with 100 or more employees made up 53% of our sample in 2020, 48% in 2022 and 53% in 2024.