Manufacturing Employee Turnover Costs

By the editors at Reliable. Last updated October 16, 2026.

The short version: The turnover-cost benchmarks in circulation trace to a handful of sources. A 2012 Center for American Progress review analyzed 30 case studies. After excluding executives and physicians, the remaining 27 cases had a median turnover cost of 21% of annual salary. A 2020 Washington Center for Equitable Growth brief, pooling 31 case studies that include several also used by CAP, found a median of 23.5% of annual wage.

The larger figures come from consulting and vendor sources. Gallup estimates one-half to two times annual salary. SHRM reports an average cost per hire of $4,683. UKG, a workforce software vendor, reports that most manufacturing HR leaders it surveyed put the cost of replacing a skilled frontline worker at $20,000 to $40,000.

Government data measures turnover, not its cost. In 2025, BLS counted 2.1 million quits in manufacturing, an average monthly quit rate of 1.4%, down from 2.4% in 2021. Manufacturing workers had a median tenure of 4.9 years in January 2026, against 4.1 years for all workers.

Applied to the BLS median wage of $64,100 for industrial machinery mechanics, machinery maintenance workers, and millwrights, the benchmarks imply anywhere from about $13,000 to $128,000 per departure. That spread is the finding, and which figure applies depends on what a plant counts.

How We Evaluated

Independent editorial analysis based on publicly available government data, peer-reviewed research, and the original pages behind widely quoted benchmarks.

Reliable Magazine does not sell scheduling software, staffing services, or consulting and has no commercial interest in routing readers toward any particular vendor. Reliable does not accept payment for rankings. Vendors may sponsor enhanced listings with additional detail, but editorial rankings are independent. Read our editorial policy.

We sorted every figure into three tiers and kept the tiers apart:

• Government sources: BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) annual tables for quits, hires, and separations in manufacturing; the BLS Employee Tenure release; and the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook for one wage used in arithmetic examples.

• Research and policy analysis: the Center for American Progress review of turnover case studies and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth update, both pooling estimates from published research papers.

• Consulting, association, vendor, and insurer material: Gallup, SHRM, Work Institute, UKG, Oxford Economics, Deloitte, and Travelers, with each stake stated at use.

Three rules applied throughout. Each figure stays tied to the population, year, and cost components of its source. Nothing is averaged across sources, and no estimate is treated as a measured manufacturing cost. A figure appears only if a named source page prints it, and our own arithmetic is labeled as arithmetic.

What the Turnover Benchmarks Say

Six figures account for most of what gets quoted about the cost of losing an employee. Five of them cover multiple industries. UKG's survey focuses on manufacturing. Each counts different things.

21% of annual salary

The Center for American Progress review by Heather Boushey and Sarah Jane Glynn (November 2012) pooled 30 case studies from 11 research papers published between 1992 and 2007. For all positions except executives and physicians (27 case studies), the median cost of turnover was 21% of an employee's annual salary. For workers earning less than $50,000, the median was 20%. For positions under $30,000, it was 16%. Across all 30 studies, the estimates ranged from 5.8% to 213% of salary.

Cost components vary by study. CAP groups direct costs into separation, temporary coverage, replacement, and training, and it notes that only two of the 11 papers included indirect costs such as lost productivity, errors while new hires learn, and lost customers. The report's appendix lists case studies in grocery retail, hotels, hospitals, long-term care, schools, call centers, and a set of New Jersey employers that includes one heavy manufacturing plant. CAP is a policy institute.

23.5% of annual wage

The Washington Center for Equitable Growth revisited the question in December 2020. Kate Bahn and Carmen Sanchez Cumming pooled 31 case studies from research published between 2000 and 2020, including several studies also used by CAP, such as the supermarket, hotel, and New Jersey employer cases. The median turnover cost was 23.5% of a worker's annual wage, and the average was 39.6%. For workers earning less than the 2019 average annual wage of $53,490, the figure was 19.3%. Estimates ranged from about 2% to almost 150%, with health services averaging 32.7% and hospitality 19.6%. The brief does not state an exclusion for executives and physicians comparable to CAP's, so the two medians are not drawn on the same rules.

The brief separates direct costs (advertising, screening, onboarding, training, and overtime to cover the vacancy) from indirect costs such as paperwork errors and lost customers. In one supermarket study, counting the indirect costs roughly doubled the estimate. Equitable Growth is a policy research organization.

One-half to two times annual salary

Gallup published its range in March 2019. Shane McFeely and Ben Wigert wrote that replacing an employee costs one-half to two times the employee's annual salary, which the article calls a conservative estimate, and that voluntary turnover costs U.S. businesses a trillion dollars a year. The article's example is a 100-person organization with an average salary of $50,000 facing turnover and replacement costs of about $660,000 to $2.6 million a year.

The article does not show how the national total was built. It reports that 52% of employees who left voluntarily said their manager or organization could have done something to keep them. Gallup sells workplace consulting and engagement surveys.

$4,683 per hire

SHRM's 2022 Talent Access Report, using data collected from April to November 2021, reports an average cost per hire of $4,683 and a median of $1,244. The measure sums recruiting expenses, including agency and job board fees, advertising, referral payments, candidate travel, relocation, and recruiter pay and benefits, and divides the total by the number of hires. A SHRM article from April 2022 quotes consultant Edie Goldberg, who estimates that the total cost to hire a new employee can be three to four times the position's salary once soft costs are included; this is a practitioner's estimate. SHRM is a membership association for HR professionals. The pages we reviewed do not print the "six to nine months of salary" figure often attributed to SHRM.

33% to 200% of salary

Work Institute, a retention consulting firm that conducts exit interviews, cites estimated turnover costs ranging from 33% up to 200% of the departing employee's salary in an August 20, 2022 article. The article describes cost categories (separation, replacement, training, transition, opportunity, absenteeism, and productivity) but doesn't show how they produce the 33% to 200% range, and it names no source.

$20,000 to $40,000 per skilled frontline worker

UKG, a workforce management software vendor, surveyed 304 HR leaders at U.S. manufacturers in June 2023 for its report "A Turning Point for Manufacturing." Most put the average cost of replacing a skilled frontline employee at $20,000 to $40,000. In the same survey, 54% reported annual turnover above 20%, 62% said turnover had risen over the prior year, and seven in ten said turnover had a noticeable effect on the bottom line (47% moderate, 22% severe). UKG also reports that about one-third of new-hire turnover happens within the first 30 days.

Deloitte's 2025 Manufacturing Industry Outlook cites the 2024 edition of the UKG survey, in which 60% of 300 HR leaders put the replacement cost at $10,000 to $40,000 and 56% said turnover had a moderate to severe effect on finances. These are HR leaders' estimates of their own costs, collected by a vendor that sells scheduling and HR software. They are opinions, not measurements.

What the Benchmarks Imply for One Technician

BLS reports a median annual wage of $64,100 (May 2025) for industrial machinery mechanics, machinery maintenance workers, and millwrights on its Occupational Outlook Handbook page. Applying each percentage benchmark to that wage shows how far apart the figures sit. The percentage rows are our arithmetic on a national median, and none is a measured cost. The UKG row repeats the survey's own dollar estimates and is not a multiplication of the BLS wage.

The low end of the table comes from pooled studies that counted specific costs. The high end comes from ranges whose derivation is not published. A plant that wants a defensible number should start from the CAP or Equitable Growth components and fill in its own wage, time-to-fill, and training hours.

How Much Turnover Manufacturing Has

The BLS sources reviewed do not provide a manufacturing replacement-cost estimate. They do measure the turnover itself, in the annual JOLTS tables published each March. The 2025 figures for manufacturing, not seasonally adjusted, come from Tables 17 through 26 of the January 2026 reference-month release, published March 13, 2026.

Four things to take from the table:

• Manufacturing quits fell by about 40% from 2021 to 2025 (our arithmetic on the two BLS levels: 3,488,000 to 2,099,000). The quits rate fell from 2.4% to 1.4%. The all-industry quits rate was 2.0% in 2025, so manufacturing workers quit at a lower rate than the economy as a whole.

• Nondurable goods turns over faster than durable goods. In 2025, the quits rate was 1.6% in nondurable goods and 1.3% in durable goods; total separations were 2.7% and 2.3%.

• Quits made up about 57% of manufacturing separations in 2025 (2,099,000 of 3,697,000, our arithmetic). Layoffs and discharges averaged about 0.9% per month across all five years.

• Manufacturing hires totaled 3,583,000 in 2025 against 3,697,000 separations, so separations exceeded hires by 114,000 (our arithmetic). Hires fell from 3,986,000 in 2024.

Why the BLS rate looks low

BLS calculates its annual average quits rate by dividing the sum of 12 monthly quits levels by the sum of 12 monthly employment levels. A 1.4% quits rate means roughly 1.4% of manufacturing jobs saw a quit in a typical month. Multiplying the rounded manufacturing rates by 12 gives about 17 quits and 29 total separations per 100 jobs in average employment during the year. Both are our arithmetic, and they count events, not people: the same worker may be counted more than once during the year.

These figures provide context for a plant's annual turnover calculation when definitions and periods match. UKG's 2023 survey reports the share of companies above a turnover threshold, a different statistic with different denominators, weighting, and reference periods. It cannot validate or contradict the BLS aggregate.

How Long Manufacturing Workers Stay

The BLS Employee Tenure release of September 24, 2026, reports median tenure with the current employer as of January 2026. Manufacturing workers had a median of 4.9 years, unchanged from January 2024 and down from 5.2 years in January 2022. Durable and nondurable goods both stood at 4.9 years. All wage and salary workers had a median of 4.1 years, and private-sector workers 3.9 years.

Manufacturing workers had longer current-employer tenure at the median than private-sector workers as a whole, by about a year. Current tenure also reflects workforce age and hiring patterns, so it is not a retention rate. BLS notes that the January 2026 data use the 2022 Census industry classification, so the industry figures are not strictly comparable with earlier years. The tenure survey is biennial.

Where the Ramp-Up Figures Come From

Much of the cost of turnover sits in the months before a new hire reaches full output. The figures quoted for that period have specific origins.

• £30,614 and the weeks to full output. Oxford Economics, in a February 2014 report with a foreword by the UK insurer Unum, estimated an average replacement cost of £30,614 for employees earning £25,000 a year or more across five UK sectors: retail, legal, accountancy, media and advertising, and IT and technology. The estimate comprises £25,181 in lost output while the replacement reaches full productivity and £5,433 in logistical costs. The report gives time to optimum productivity by hire source: about 15 weeks for someone from the same sector, 32 weeks from another sector, 40 weeks for a new graduate, and a full calendar year for someone hired from unemployment or inactivity. The 28-week average widely quoted from this study appears in HRreview's coverage and not in the report text we searched. Manufacturing was not among the sectors.

• First-year injuries. Travelers, a workers' compensation insurer, reports in its 2026 Injury Impact Report that first-year employees accounted for about 37% of indemnity claims and 34% of claim costs across industries in 2021 to 2025, and the interactive report puts first-year employees at 31% of its manufacturing claims. The report gives no workforce denominator, so these are shares of claims, not injury rates.

• The first 30 days. UKG reports that about one-third of new-hire turnover in manufacturing happens within the first 30 days, from its 2023 survey of HR leaders.

None of these is a manufacturing productivity curve. The sources reviewed here do not establish a broadly applicable U.S. manufacturing ramp-up benchmark.

At a Glance

Honest Limitations

• The BLS sources reviewed do not price turnover. They report quits, hires, separations, and tenure. They do not provide a manufacturing replacement-cost estimate.

• The pooled benchmarks are old and cross-industry. The CAP case studies come from papers published between 1992 and 2007, the Equitable Growth studies from 2000 to 2020, and only one case in either pool is a manufacturing plant. Wage levels, hiring costs, and training requirements have changed since many of those studies.

• The wide ranges are not derived in print. Gallup publishes its one-half to two times range without a method. Work Institute describes cost categories but does not show how they produce its 33% to 200% range.

• The UKG figures are opinions. They record what HR leaders estimate replacement costs to be, and the ranges differ between the 2023 and 2024 editions. They are also collected by a vendor with products to sell.

• The dollar table is arithmetic. Each percentage row multiplies a benchmark by one BLS national median wage; the UKG row repeats survey estimates. A plant's wages, time to fill, and training time will yield different results.

• The annualized BLS rates are approximations of events. Multiplying rounded monthly rates by 12 introduces rounding error, the result counts separation events per 100 jobs and not unique workers, and the BLS rates cover all manufacturing employees, not production or maintenance workers alone.

• Tenure data are not strictly comparable over time. BLS changed industry classifications with the January 2026 data.

• The ramp-up figures are foreign and partly secondhand. The Oxford Economics estimates cover UK employees earning £25,000 or more in five non-manufacturing sectors, and the 28-week average quoted from the study appears in trade coverage, not in the report text we searched.

• No total is constructed. This guide does not combine quits, replacement costs, and ramp-up time into a national or per-plant cost of manufacturing turnover.

Related Guides

• Manufacturing Maintenance Skills Gap Statistics

• The Real Cost of Maintenance Overtime

• Maintenance Worker Injury and Fatality Statistics

• Deferred Maintenance Backlog Statistics

• Industrial Downtime Cost Benchmarks

Sources

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Table 22. Annual average quits rates by industry and region, not seasonally adjusted (JOLTS annual tables from the January 2026 release; Tables 17 through 26 for hires, separations, and layoffs, the Employee Tenure release, and the Occupational Outlook Handbook page are linked in the text).

• Center for American Progress. There Are Significant Business Costs to Replacing Employees (Boushey and Glynn, November 2012; the report PDF with the case study appendix is linked in the text).

• Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Improving U.S. labor standards and the quality of jobs to reduce the costs of employee turnover to U.S. companies (Bahn and Sanchez Cumming, December 2020; 31 case studies).

• Gallup. This Fixable Problem Costs U.S. Businesses $1 Trillion (McFeely and Wigert, March 2019; consulting firm).

• SHRM. 2022 Talent Access Report (cost-per-hire average and median, data collected 2021; the April 2022 article with the consultant estimate is linked in the text).

• Work Institute. Breaking Down the Direct Costs of Employee Turnover (August 20, 2022; retention consulting firm; 33% to 200% range).

• UKG. How to Reduce Turnover in Manufacturing (workforce software vendor; figures from its 2023 survey of 304 manufacturing HR leaders).

• Deloitte Insights. 2025 Manufacturing Industry Outlook (cites the 2024 UKG survey and BLS quits data).

• Oxford Economics. The Cost of Brain Drain: Understanding the Financial Impact of Staff Turnover (February 2014; foreword by Unum; UK employees earning £25,000 or more in five sectors; the HRreview article with the 28-week figure is linked in the text).

• Travelers. Travelers Injury Impact Report Highlights Longer Recovery Times Amid Declining Injury Rates (May 4, 2026 release; indemnity claims, 2021 to 2025; the interactive report with the manufacturing figure is linked in the text).