How many people work in UK manufacturing?

2,460,000 workforce jobs in manufacturing in 2026 Q2, seasonally adjusted, against 2,524,000 a year earlier (ONS series JWR7, published 15 September 2026): 64,000 fewer by our subtraction.

How big is UK manufacturing?

Manufacturing accounted for 8.5% of UK gross value added in the second quarter of 2026 (House of Commons Library, from ONS data). There were 130,000 manufacturing businesses registered for VAT and/or PAYE in March 2025, 4.8% of all UK businesses (ONS).

Did UK manufacturing output grow in 2025?

No. Output fell 1.0% in 2025 after rising 0.3% in 2024 (ONS series K27Y). In the three months to July 2026 it was 1.7% higher than a year earlier.

What do UK manufacturers pay for electricity?

17.47p per kWh on average in 2026 Q1, excluding the Climate Change Levy, down from 18.43p a year earlier (DESNZ, provisional). From April 2027 the British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme will cut bills by up to 25% for eligible manufacturers.

Are UK factories short of capacity?

Mostly the opposite: 75% of manufacturers in the CBI Industrial Trends Survey were working below capacity in July 2026, and 70% named orders or sales as the factor likely to limit output.

Home / Western European manufacturing in 2026: the data

Manufacturing data · United Kingdom · ONS and national sources, read 24 September 2026

United Kingdom: the manufacturing data behind a 2026 plant decision

Output down 1.0% in 2025, 64,000 fewer manufacturing jobs in a year, three firms in four working below capacity and investment intentions deep in negative territory. What the ONS, DESNZ and the CBI survey say about a UK plant in 2026, with the release behind every figure.

In shortManufacturing was 8.5% of UK gross value added in the second quarter of 2026 (House of Commons Library, from ONS data). Manufacturing workforce jobs stood at 2,460,000 in 2026 Q2, against 2,524,000 a year earlier (ONS), and output fell 1.0% in 2025 before rising 1.7% year on year in the three months to July 2026. In July 2026, 75% of manufacturers in the CBI Industrial Trends Survey were working below capacity and 70% named orders or sales as the factor most likely to limit output. Manufacturers paid an average 17.47p per kWh of electricity in 2026 Q1, excluding the Climate Change Levy (DESNZ, provisional).

Output, jobs and businesses

United Kingdom manufacturing: output, jobs and businesses
Indicator	Earlier	Latest
Manufacturing share of UK gross value added	·	8.5% (2026 Q2)
Manufacturing output, change on previous year (chained volume)	+0.3% (2024)	-1.0% (2025)
Manufacturing output, three months to July 2026 vs a year earlier	·	+1.7%
Workforce jobs, manufacturing, seasonally adjusted (thousand)	2,524 (2025 Q2)	2,460 (2026 Q2)
Manufacturing businesses registered for VAT and/or PAYE	·	130,000 (March 2025), 4.8% of all UK businesses
Job vacancies, manufacturing (thousand)	47 (June 2026)	48 (July 2026)

ONS series K27Y (manufacturing output, 11 September 2026), JWR7 (workforce jobs, 15 September 2026) and JP9I (vacancies, 15 September 2026); ONS UK business: activity, size and location 2025 (24 September 2025); House of Commons Library, Manufacturing industries: economic indicators (14 September 2026). The UK is outside Eurostat’s current series, so none of these figures is directly comparable with the Eurostat rows on our other country pages.

The UK lost 64,000 manufacturing jobs between the second quarters of 2025 and 2026 (our subtraction of the two ONS figures), and 18,000 of them in the last quarter alone. Output fell in 2025 and began to recover only in the spring of 2026. Food and drink and transport equipment are the two largest manufacturing sub-sectors (Make UK, UK Manufacturing: The Facts 2025).

Capacity, demand and investment

CBI Industrial Trends Survey, July 2026 (338 manufacturers)
Indicator	Latest	Reference
Firms working below capacity	75%	76% (four-quarter average)
Firms citing orders or sales as likely to limit output	70%	66% in April; 65% long-run average
Firms citing materials or components as a limit	21%	30% in April
Balance of firms expecting to raise plant and machinery investment over 12 months	-43	·

CBI Industrial Trends Survey, July 2026 (survey period 25 June to 13 July 2026), as reported by the MTA and Specification Online on 24 July 2026. An industry survey, not official statistics.

Demand, not capacity, is the UK constraint: three firms in four have spare capacity and seven in ten expect orders to limit output. Spare capacity is not free. Fixed costs are spread over fewer good units, so cost per unit rises, and a negative investment balance of -43 means that projects which need large capital outlays will struggle to be approved.

Pay, labour cost and energy

Median gross annual earnings for full-time employees in all industries were £39,039 in April 2025 (ONS, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings). For manufacturing, median full-time pay was £38,956 in 2025 (Statista, on ASHE data; not confirmed on an ONS page). The UK publishes no hourly labour cost comparable with Eurostat’s, so our OEE comparison uses a TEEPTRAK estimate of £25.4 an hour: that pay, plus employer National Insurance at 15% above £5,000 and a 3% pension contribution on qualifying earnings, divided by 1,775 hours worked.

Manufacturers paid 17.47p per kWh of electricity on average in 2026 Q1, excluding the Climate Change Levy, down from 18.43p a year earlier (DESNZ Quarterly Energy Prices, June 2026, provisional); the figure for 2025 Q4 was 16.8p. From April 2027, the British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme will cut electricity bills by up to 25%, around £35-40 per MWh, for more than 10,000 eligible manufacturers in qualifying sectors, worth up to £600 million a year (GOV.UK, 15 April 2026).

AI adoption and support

Around 35% of UK businesses with 10 or more employees reported using at least one AI technology in June 2026, up from around 12% when the question was first asked (ONS Business Insights and Conditions Survey, wave 159, published 20 July 2026). The ONS does not publish a manufacturing-only figure for this measure. The Made Smarter adoption programme provides £116 million for manufacturing SMEs to access advice and training, reaching 5,500 SMEs, under the Industrial Strategy’s advanced manufacturing plan (business.gov.uk, 15 July 2026).

What this means for a plant here

Take cost out before you add capacity. With 75% of manufacturers below capacity, the case for measuring losses in the UK is cost per good unit and the ability to run fewer, better shifts, not more output.
Price the idle hour. At the £25.4 estimate, twenty operators waiting for one eight-hour shift is about £4,060 of direct labour; a 150 kW line left running idle for an hour at 17.47p is about £26 of electricity. Arithmetic on the figures above, before overheads.
Know what a point is worth before you ask for budget. On a reference two-shift line, one OEE point is worth £7,483 a year at UK costs.
Keep the first step small. With investment intentions at -43, a light monitoring project with a measured baseline is easier to approve than a plant-wide system; Made Smarter support may cover part of the advice.

DisclosureThis site is published by TEEPTRAK SAS, which sells production-monitoring and OEE software (450+ factories equipped in 30+ countries; offices in Paris, Chicago, Shenzhen and Bucharest). Read the figures above as data and this line as the interest behind them. For a UK plant the honest order is: agree which losses you are trying to move, log stop causes by hand for a month, then decide whether a dedicated system, an MES module you already pay for, or a local integrator is the cheapest way to keep doing it.

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Questions

How many people work in UK manufacturing?: 2,460,000 workforce jobs in manufacturing in 2026 Q2, seasonally adjusted, against 2,524,000 a year earlier (ONS series JWR7, published 15 September 2026): 64,000 fewer by our subtraction.
How big is UK manufacturing?: Manufacturing accounted for 8.5% of UK gross value added in the second quarter of 2026 (House of Commons Library, from ONS data). There were 130,000 manufacturing businesses registered for VAT and/or PAYE in March 2025, 4.8% of all UK businesses (ONS).
Did UK manufacturing output grow in 2025?: No. Output fell 1.0% in 2025 after rising 0.3% in 2024 (ONS series K27Y). In the three months to July 2026 it was 1.7% higher than a year earlier.
What do UK manufacturers pay for electricity?: 17.47p per kWh on average in 2026 Q1, excluding the Climate Change Levy, down from 18.43p a year earlier (DESNZ, provisional). From April 2027 the British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme will cut bills by up to 25% for eligible manufacturers.
Are UK factories short of capacity?: Mostly the opposite: 75% of manufacturers in the CBI Industrial Trends Survey were working below capacity in July 2026, and 70% named orders or sales as the factor likely to limit output.

Sources

Published by TEEPTRAK SAS, which makes production-monitoring and OEE software. Every figure is sourced on the page; differences and estimates marked as ours are calculations on the published figures. Statistics are revised: check the official release before you budget or commit.