Manufacturing: Still vital to Ohio

At its height, manufacturing dominated the Ohio economy, employing half of all workers in the state. That was during World War II, supplying the Allied forces. Since then, the manufacturing footprint has shrunken, but the sector remains a vital part of the economy. Today, one in eight Ohio workers is in manufacturing, making the state third in the nation, after California and Texas, for the size of our manufacturing workforce: nearly 687,000 in 2015. Average wages of $1,119 per week in the sector exceeded the average for all sectors by 24.9 percent. Ohio manufacturers contributed $108 billion to the economy in 2015, 17.8 percent of the total for the state.