Manufacturing is emerging from difficult, unprecedented times. Factories shut down and companies handed out pay cuts, furloughs, and job cuts in order to survive a pandemic that threw into uncertainty everything from domestic production and worker health and safety to complex international supply chains. The business climate was so disruptive that it would have been difficult to meaningfully represent salaries from that period.
While supply chains are still unpredictable, and manufacturers are straining to keep a handle on demand, the medium-term effects of the coronavirus outbreak itself appear to have lessened enough to grasp what things look like as the business world emerges from a very strange year just past.
2021 looks like a chance for a fresh start after all the calamity of 2020. With that in mind, let’s review the 2021 IndustryWeek Salary Survey, our survey of U.S. manufacturing management. The survey was conducted during March and April.
