Thriving or Surviving? The Manufacturing Sector Health Check - August 2025

Enginuity’s monthly Manufacturing Sector Health Check pulls together the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) data to track the performance of UK manufacturing, covering GDP, jobs, pay, exports, and production. 

The latest figures from the ONS are in, and a variety of external factors may have impacted the outlook for August 2025. The question: are we thriving, or surviving? 

GDP (for June 2025)

Manufacturing GDP for June has increased 0.6 points, to 101.9, and UK GDP as a whole increased 0.4 points.

The June increase follows consecutive falls of 0.1% in April* 2025 and May 2025.

The largest-growing manufacturing sub-sectors were:

• Manufacture of computer, electronic and optical products (3.4%)
• Manufacture of leather and related products (4.1%).

Employment and Vacancies (for July 2025)

The number of paid employees in manufacturing fell by ~4580, representing a 0.2% decline. In comparison, the UK lost 8.3K paid employees, a drop of 0.03%.

Manufacturing vacancies decreased by 3000 (6.1%), compared to a 17K (1.0%) decrease for the UK.

Year on year, manufacturing vacancies have dropped by over a quarter (27%), compared to a 16.8% drop for all sectors.

Wages and payroll (for June 2025)

In June, manufacturing mean pay dropped by 0.4% to £3,606, while the UK overall saw a 0.3% decrease to £3,316.

UK aggregate pay fell by 0.37% to £100.47B, while the manufacturing sector experienced a larger decrease of 0.54% to £8.36B.

Exports and Production (for June 2025)

Exports remained relatively unchanged with a decrease of >0.1%.   

The manufacturing sub-sectors with the largest export growth this month were:

• Manufacture of wood and products of wood and cork, excluding furniture (26.1%)
• Cement, lime, plaster and articles of concrete, cement and plaster (25.0%)

UK Production Values (for June 2025)

The largest growth in production value this month came from:

• Repair and maintenance of aircraft and spacecraft (41.9%)
• Building of ships and boats (25.3%)
• Manufacture of computer, electronic and optical products (21.5%)

Our take on this month’s figures

While the manufacturing sector remains robust with a modest increase in GDP in June, it has seen a significant negative impact over the last 3 months from factors such as the NIC increase and trade tariffs.

The number of paid manufacturing employees is falling at a greater rate than the UK as a whole, showing a concerning contraction of the sector.

This, coupled with a significantly higher drop in monthly vacancies in the sector, a higher decrease in average salaries and a greater drop in aggregate pay within the manufacturing sector, indicates the sector is Surviving rather than Thriving.

*Revised data