Thriving or Surviving? The Manufacturing Sector Health Check - October 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 October 2025. The question: are we thriving, or surviving?

GDP (for August 2025)

Manufacturing GDP for August has increased 0.7s points, to 100.5 – UK GDP as a whole increased 0.1 points. 

The largest-growing manufacturing sub-sectors were:

• Manufacture of basic pharmaceutical products and pharmaceutical preparations (3.0)
• Manufacture of chemicals and chemical products (2.0)
• Manufacture of machinery and equipment n.e.c (2.0)

Employment & Vacancies (for September 2025)

Paid employees in manufacturing fell by ~6,000, representing a -0.3% decline. In comparison, the UK lost 10K paid employees, a -0.03% change.

Manufacturing vacancies fell by 2,000 (4.2%) in September, compared to an 11k (1.5%) increase for the UK. 

Year on year, manufacturing vacancies have dropped 22%, compared to a 13.8% drop for all sectors.

Wages and Payroll (for August 2025)

Manufacturing mean pay rose by 0.2% to £3,639*, while the UK overall saw a 1.4% increase to £3,422.

UK aggregate pay rose by 1.5% to £103.81B per month, while the manufacturing sector experienced a decrease of 0.5% to £8.39B.

Exports and Production (for August 2025) 

Exports in August increased by 1.1%, following a decrease in July. 

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

• Manufacture of motor vehicles, trailers, and semi-trailers (18.5%)
• Manufacture of vegetable and animal oils and fats (16.8%)
• Manufacture of other transport equipment (13.5%)

UK Production Values (for August 2025) 

The largest growth in production value this month came from (Only two sectors recorded higher production in August compared to the previous month): 

• Repair and maintenance of aircraft and spacecraft (20.2%)
• Manufacture of soap and detergents, cleaning and polishing (0.6%)

The largest decrease in production value came from: 

• Manufacture of other transport equipment (-39.6%)
• Manufacture of wearing apparel (-33.0%)
• Manufacture of transport equipment (-30.5%)

Our take

The manufacturing sector recovered half of the drop in GDP in July, increasing by 0.7 points.

The number of paid manufacturing employees is falling at a greater rate than in the UK as a whole, showing a concerning contraction of the sector. Will this negative trend ever stop?

September saw 2,000 fewer vacancies than the previous month, and wages have continued to increase slowly; however, the growth remains a fraction of the national rate. Aggregate pay for the sector decreased in August, while nationally it increased.

In August, exports grew by 1.1%, however, only two sectors experienced production growth.

Do all these indicators point to a manufacturing sector that is surviving rather than thriving?

*Previous months adjusted