How much do production planners make in 2026?
Production planners are counted in the BLS production, planning and expediting clerks series: OEWS May 2025 gives the SOC 43-5061 national median as $59,650 a year ($28.68 an hour), with the bottom 10% near $40,080 and the top 10% at $86,000. Two things are worth saying plainly about this occupation. First, it is classified as a clerical code, which understates the analytical content of modern planning roles — a planner balancing capacity, material availability, changeover cost and customer commitments is doing genuine optimisation work, and the ceiling of this band reflects that better than its midpoint does. Second, employment is projected to decline. Planning systems have absorbed a great deal of the manual scheduling, expediting and shortage-chasing that once defined the role, and enterprise resource planning and advanced planning tools now generate schedules that planners refine rather than construct. The planners who have gained from that shift are the ones who understand the system's logic well enough to challenge it: master data quality, planning parameters, capacity modelling and constraint analysis. Those skills lead to supply chain and materials management roles that sit well outside this clerical code. Planners whose value was chasing parts by telephone are the exposed group. Employment is projected to change by -1.8% through 2034 with roughly 34,100 openings a year. → Full production planner career guide, career path, credentials & placement →
Note: $59,650 blends every experience level and every setting in this occupation. For pay by level alone, see Pay by Level below.
- Production Planners earn a national median $59,650/yr ($28.68/hr) (BLS OEWS May 2025, SOC 43-5061); the P10 to P90 range is $40,080 to $86,000.
- The role sits in a clerical BLS code that understates the analytical content of modern planning — the upper end of the $40,080 to $86,000 band reflects the work better than the midpoint.
- Employment is projected to decline 1.8% as planning systems absorb manual scheduling, expediting and shortage chasing.
- Planners who understand master data, planning parameters and capacity modelling well enough to challenge system output progress into supply chain roles outside this code entirely.
US Production Planner Pay Distribution · BLS OEWS May 2025
Pay by Level · BLS OEWS May 2025
How much do production planners earn at each level?
BLS OEWS publishes one blended wage for the whole occupation and does not break pay out by credential or practice level. The levels below distribute the published percentile range across the credential tiers this role actually hires at.
Level medians are aligned to the BLS OEWS May 2025 percentile distribution for SOC 43-5061; GlobalCybers does not yet publish a verified placement sample for this role, so no verified median is shown.
Methodology & Sources
How the numbers on this page are built
Published (BLS): BLS OEWS May 2025, SOC 43-5061, United States national estimate. Public, methodologically rigorous, but sampled on a rolling 3-year basis and published ~10 months after collection — so it reflects wages that are already 1–2 years old by the time you read them.
Level and certification medians: distributed across the published BLS percentile range for this SOC code (P10 through P90) according to the credential tiers this occupation actually hires at. They are modeled reference points, not separately surveyed wages.
State and metro figures: modeled — the BLS national median multiplied by the GlobalCybers state wage index, and for metros by the published metro index for that state. They are estimates of local pay, not BLS state or metropolitan-area observations, and are labelled as modeled in the tables below.
No verified placement sample:GlobalCybers does not yet publish a placement median for this role, so no "verified" figure appears anywhere on this page.
Pay by Career Level
How much does a production planner earn at each career stage?
Planning pay follows analytical depth and how much of the plan the role genuinely owns. Each median is anchored to the BLS OEWS distribution for SOC 43-5061.
By State
Which states pay production planners the most in 2026?
State figures are modeled estimates — the BLS national median multiplied by the GlobalCybers salary-calculator state wage index — not BLS state observations. Planning pay follows the industry and system sophistication of the employer more than the state, and many planning roles are now performed remotely or from shared service centres.
6 of 51 state guides shown, ranked by median. Bar is relative to California ($68,600), the highest-paying state shown. See all role salary guides →
By Metro
Which cities pay production planners the most?
Metro figures are modeled — national median times state wage index times published metro index — not BLS MSA observations. Planning functions are increasingly centralised into regional or shared service locations rather than sitting at each plant, which weakens the local geographic signal.
BLS OEWS MSA estimates, May 2025. Nominal pay — weigh each metro against its cost of living before relocating.
Certification Impact
Which certifications raise a production planner’s pay the most?
Median annual pay before and after each credential, based on GlobalCybers placement data cross-referenced with BLS. License upgrades move the needle most; stackable certs add on top.
Impacts are not additive, the licensing rows share the same career ladder. Browse all 167 certifications →
Trade Comparison
How does production planner pay compare to related roles?
BLS OEWS national median across the closest trades. Production Planners sit mid-pack on median but carry one of the widest P10–P90 spreads, licensing and specialization drive the upside.
BLS OEWS May 2025. Verify production planner wages on BLS.gov →
Take-Home Pay
What does a production planner actually take home after taxes?
The medians above are gross base wage.
Estimates use 2026 federal brackets, standard deduction, and 7.65% FICA. Actual take-home varies with filing status, deductions, and local tax.
FAQ
Production Planner Salary, Frequently Asked Questions
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