San Bernardino County manufacturing produces $188,000 per worker, about a quarter below the national mark

The figure comes from the Manufacturers' Council of the Inland Empire, which divides the county's manufacturing output of roughly $9.6 billion to $10 billion by about 51,000 manufacturing jobs. The national benchmark holds up against the broader data: U.S. manufacturing produced $2.91 trillion in value added in 2024 across roughly 12.7 million workers, which pencils to about $229,000 a head.

The number runs against the region's reputation. The IE reads nationally as a place where manufacturing is small and getting smaller — a logistics economy that left the factory behind. But manufacturing is one of the county's highest-value sectors per worker, ahead of several of its largest employers, even as it accounts for only about 6% of jobs and roughly 7% of county GDP. Logistics alone is 20% of wage-and-salary employment, healthcare 17%, government 15%. The sector is dense with value and thin on headcount.

That changes what the gap means for an operator. The region's manufacturing employment has been contracting — IE factory payrolls fell over the past year — so the path to more output does not run through more hiring or more land, both scarce here. It runs through getting more from the people and equipment already in place. A plant that lifts output per worker toward the national mark captures the difference without expanding its footprint, which is the lever when industrial land is expensive and the workforce is shrinking.

The distinction matters because the two numbers point different directions. Falling headcount reads as a sector in retreat; high and riseable value per worker reads as a sector with room to run. For operators weighing whether to invest in automation or process upgrades over expansion, the second number is the one that describes the opportunity in front of them.