This average exceeded the 3.8-hour manufacturing average and surpassed most subsectors within the industry. Only workers in transportation equipment logged more overtime, at 5.3 hours per week. The 4.0-hour average represents a rise from the 3.6 hours recorded in both 2023 and 2024, though it remains below the 2018 peak of 4.6 hours. That’s more than the 3.8-hour overall manufacturing average and ahead of most subsectors, including chemicals (3.1), fabricated metal (3.5), and plastics and rubber (3.6).
Overtime Driven by Absences
Three primary reasons a plant needs overtime are demand above plan, unfilled positions, and absences. While most facilities keep track of the first two, the third routinely gets taken over by general overtime, leaving it unmonitored and unmanaged. Illness and injury account for roughly three-quarters of manufacturing absences. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the absence rate in manufacturing reached 2.9% in 2025, with 2.2 percentage points linked specifically to illness and injury. Nondurable goods, the category food and beverage falls under, reported a 3.0% rate with 2.1 points from illness and injury.
Stricter attendance policies would not effectively address the majority of absences since they stem from health issues rather than personal choices. Food manufacturing recorded 3.3 injury and illness cases per 100 full-time workers in 2024, compared to 2.3 in private industry overall. Cases resulting in days away from work totaled 2.3 per 100 in it versus 1.4 in private industry, highlighting the sector’s raised risk profile.
Read Also: U.S. Import Inflation Drives Food Prices Higher
Subsector Variations and Costs
Injury rates vary significantly across food subsectors. Seafood preparation had 5.0 cases per 100, beet sugar 6.8, and dairy 4.2. Animal slaughtering and processing logged 3.2 overall, with more job transfers and restrictions (1.4 per 100) than days-away cases (0.7), suggesting repetitive strain issues predominate in these operations. Production and nonsupervisory workers in food manufacturing earned an average of $24.70 an hour as of August 2026. Overtime pays time and a half, so every overtime hour has a premium of $12.35 above straight time. At 4.0 hours a week for 52 weeks, that premium costs roughly $2,570 per production worker annually.
Separating overtime costs by cause for a single quarter helps determine whether you’re paying a premium for growth, for open requisitions, or for absence, each of which calls for a different response. You can narrow it further by ranking shifts by unplanned absence hours to identify the two or three most critical. Be sure to view additional overtime as the expensive answer it is.
Overtime raises both cost and fatigue, and fatigue can worsen an injury rate already 43% higher than private industry averages. The plants that reduce absence tend to work on the things causing it, which the BLS data shows is mostly injuries and illnesses. See the BLS injury and illness tables for your own subsector’s rate, and the Industry at a Glance page for food manufacturing for current hours and earnings.
