Production Manager Salary in New York 2026,
$130,470 Median | BLS Data by City

A median $130,470 a year, or $62.73 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 3.5% above the national median of $126,060. The band runs $81,960 at the 10th percentile to $206,450 at the 90th, with the middle half between $101,260 and $167,080. The lower end is first-line production supervision and the upper end is multi-site manufacturing leadership.

New York-Newark-Jersey City at $151,630, then Ithaca $146,500, Albany-Schenectady-Troy $141,300, Binghamton $131,160 and Syracuse $131,100. That is a narrow spread by New York standards, and it reflects the fact that this state's manufacturing management is spread across upstate industrial metros rather than concentrated downstate.

Because New York's manufacturing base is small relative to its economy. A location quotient of 0.43 means the state employs this occupation at less than half the national rate, with about 6,630 managers in total. The state's economy is weighted toward finance, healthcare, media and professional services, and its manufacturing has shifted over decades toward smaller, higher-value, more regulated production. Fewer plants means fewer managers — but the ones that remain manage complex operations, which is why pay still sits above the national median.

No. New York issues no licence or state credential for industrial production management. What functions as a credential in this market is sector experience: FDA quality-system and good manufacturing practice experience for pharmaceutical and medical device plants, process and cleanroom experience for semiconductor and advanced electronics operations, and food-safety systems for the state's substantial food and beverage sector. That experience is what separates a $101,260 area manager from a $167,080 manufacturing director here.

In parts of the state, yes, for the first time in a long while. Semiconductor and advanced-electronics investment in central New York and the Capital Region is creating production management roles in places that had spent decades losing them, which is why Albany-Schenectady-Troy publishes $141,300 and Syracuse $131,100. National projections for the occupation are close to flat at 1.9% growth, so the New York story is compositional rather than a matter of overall expansion — new high-value capacity in specific regions against continued contraction in legacy sectors elsewhere.

Because what survived in New York is the production that could bear the state's costs. Commodity and volume manufacturing left decades ago; what remains is weighted toward pharmaceuticals, medical devices, precision components, food and beverage, and increasingly semiconductors — all sectors where the cost of a production error is high and the regulatory burden is heavy. Managing a validated pharmaceutical line or a semiconductor fab is a different job from managing a stamping plant, and it is paid accordingly. A 0.43 location quotient and a 3.5% pay premium are two readings of the same selection effect.

SOC 11-3051 is a broad code that covers production management across every manufacturing sector, so a food plant manager and a semiconductor operations manager sit in the same estimate despite very different markets. The $81,960 to $206,450 band reflects that mixing. The wage measure also excludes production and safety bonuses, which are a meaningful part of compensation in this occupation. And with about 6,630 managers statewide, several of the metro rows rest on small samples.

Sector first, decisively — moving into regulated pharmaceutical, medical device or semiconductor production is the clearest step available in this state, and it is most of the distance from the $130,470 median to the $167,080 seventy-fifth percentile. Scope second: whole-site then multi-site responsibility. Technical systems third, since quality-system, validation and process-control expertise is scarce and directly valued. And geography barely at all — the metro table spans only about twenty thousand dollars, which is unusual for New York and means moving within the state is rarely the lever.