Food manufacturing workers averaged 4.0 hours of weekly overtime in 2025, exceeding the 3.8-hour manufacturing average.
According to the BLS, production workers in food manufacturing earned an average of $24.70 an hour as of August 2026. Overtime pay, which is time and a half, adds a premium of $12.35 above straight time. At 4.0 hours a week for 52 weeks, this premium costs roughly $2,570 per production worker per year.
Overtime and Absence Rates
Manufacturing overtime climbed overall, from 3.6 hours in both 2023 and 2024 to 3.8 in 2025. The BLS tracks absence by industry, and manufacturing had a 2.9% absence rate in 2025, with 2.2 percentage points attributed to illness and injury.
Food manufacturing recorded 3.3 injury and illness cases per 100 full-time workers in 2024, compared to 2.3 in private industry overall. Incidents that led to days away from work totaled 2.3 per 100 in food manufacturing, compared to 1.4 in private industry.
Addressing Absence and Overtime
To address absence and overtime, it is essential to separate overtime by cause. This helps determine whether the premium is being paid for growth, open requisitions, or absence, each of which requires a different response. By ranking shifts by unplanned absence hours, manufacturers can identify the shifts and lines that generate the majority of absences.
The BLS provides injury and illness tables for each subsector, as well as an Industry at a Glance page for food manufacturing, which offers current hours and earnings data. By utilizing these resources, manufacturers can better understand the factors driving absence and overtime in their industry.
Roughly three-quarters of manufacturing absence traces to illness and injury, so a strict attendance policy isn’t the solution. The plants that reduce absence tend to work on the things causing it, which the BLS data shows is mostly injuries and illnesses.
