Industrial Engineers
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Speciality
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Overview
Design, develop, test, and evaluate integrated systems for managing industrial production processes, including human work factors, quality control, inventory control, logistics and material flow, cost analysis, and production coordination.
Highlights
Undergraduate program resulting in the highest median salary ($102K): Computer Science
Largest undergraduate program (18.3% of workers): Mechanical Engineering
Explore Pathways
Titles for this career often contain these words
EngineerQualityManufacturingExpertSpecialistProcessProductionControlErgonomistValidationHumanErgonomicsFactoryFactorsIndustrialEfficiencyEngineeringEquipmentConsultantInterfaceSystemsQCImprovementPlantErgonomicAdvisorLayOutMethodsDesignerDevelopmentAssuranceReliabilitySupplierUsabilityAdvancedAutomationCertifiedProfessionalCognitiveConsultingContinuousCorporateDistrictDocumentationAnalystInspectorPsychologistTechnicalFacilitiesFacilityFieldFoundryMachineHMILeanLiaisonApplicationsMetrologistOccupationalOperationsPackagingProductPlannerToolingCoordinatorToolProjectQualificationQAManagementResearchSalvageSiteStandardsSQESystemTestInspectionTimeStudyUser
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Responsibilities and activities

Industrial engineers typically do the following:

  • Review production schedules, engineering specifications, process flows, and other information to understand methods that are applied and activities that take place in manufacturing and services
  • Figure out how to manufacture parts or products, or deliver services, with maximum efficiency
  • Develop management control systems to make financial planning and cost analysis more efficient
  • Enact quality control procedures to resolve production problems or minimize costs
  • Design control systems to coordinate activities and production planning in order to ensure that products meet quality standards
  • Confer with clients about product specifications, vendors about purchases, management personnel about manufacturing capabilities, and staff about the status of projects

Industrial engineers apply their skills to many different situations, from manufacturing to healthcare systems to business administration. For example, they design systems for

  • moving heavy parts within manufacturing plants
  • delivering goods from a company to customers, including finding the most profitable places to locate manufacturing or processing plants
  • evaluating job performance
  • paying workers.

Some industrial engineers, called manufacturing engineers, focus entirely on the automated aspects of manufacturing processes. They design manufacturing systems to optimize the use of computer networks, robots, and materials.

Industrial engineers focus on how to get the work done most efficiently, balancing many factors, such as time, number of workers needed, available technology, actions workers need to take, achieving the end product with no errors, workers’ safety, environmental concerns, and cost.

The versatility of industrial engineers allows them to engage in activities that are useful to a variety of businesses, governments, and nonprofits. For example, industrial engineers engage in supply chain management to help businesses minimize inventory costs, conduct quality assurance activities to help businesses keep their customer bases satisfied, and work in the growing field of project management as industries across the economy seek to control costs and maximize efficiencies.

Salary
Median salary: $88,950 annually
Half of those employed in this career earn between $71,630 and $111,360.
$89K$0$50K$100K$150K
Context: Median Salary
How do salaries for this career compare to other jobs' salaries?
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Salary growth for industrial and health/safety engineers
Is this job likely to reward you for sticking with it through pay raises and promotions? The higher a job’s “experience quotient,” the more you are likely to get as you stay there.
Experience quotient percentile
Take a minute to look at how much you might expect your salary to increase with each five years' experience, as well as how the numbers working at each age change. Does this seem to be a job for the young or the old, or could it be a career offering steady salary growth for many years?
Salary distribution
$68K$77K$87K$91K$88K$85K$89K$47K$82K$0$50K$100K$150K20-2425-2930-3435-3940-4445-4950-5455-5960-64
Number employed
010K20K30K40K20-2425-2930-3435-3940-4445-4950-5455-5960-64
About Industrial Engineers
How do benefits for this career compare to other jobs? The availability of health care, especially employer provided health care, and pension plans can add significantly to the value of compensation you receive in a career. These charts compare how this career compares to other careers with regard to health care and pension plans.
Employee has health insurance
Employer is providing health insurance
Employer-provided pension plan is available
Worker concerns
Some jobs are more stressful than others, and some are just plain dangerous. The following list gives the percentages of industrial engineers who report hazardous or difficult situations typically occurring at least once a week.
  • Time Pressure (69%)
  • Responsible for Others' Health (53%)
  • Consequence of Error (36%)
  • High Conflict Frequency (32%)
SOURCES:
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Personality and skills
Can you see yourself in the ranks of Industrial Engineers? Here are the skills and traits that could lead to success.
Creativity
Industrial engineers use creativity and ingenuity to design new production processes in many kinds of settings in order to reduce the use of material resources, time, or labor while accomplishing the same goal.
Critical-thinking skills
Industrial engineers create new systems to solve problems related to waste and inefficiency. Solving these problems requires logic and reasoning to identify strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions, or approaches to the problems.
Listening skills
These engineers often operate in teams, but they also must solicit feedback from customers, vendors, and production staff. They must listen to customers and clients in order to fully grasp ideas and problems.
Math skills
Industrial engineers use the principles of calculus, trigonometry, and other advanced topics in mathematics for analysis, design, and troubleshooting in their work.
Problem-solving skills
In designing facilities for manufacturing and processes for providing services, these engineers deal with several issues at once, from workers’ safety to quality assurance.
Speaking skills
Industrial engineers sometimes have to explain their instructions to production staff or technicians before they can make written instructions available. Being able to explain concepts clearly and quickly is crucial to preventing costly mistakes and loss of time.
Writing skills
Industrial engineers must prepare documentation for other engineers or scientists, or for future reference. The documentation must be coherent and explain their thinking clearly so that the others can understand the information.
Injury and Illness
About 9 industrial engineers become injured or ill for every 10,000 workers, which reflects fewer events than in 54% of other careers. The most common specific illnesses or injuries are detailed following.
All cuts, lacerations, punctures
Fractures
Sprains, strains, tears
Education pathways to this career
Education attained by industrial engineers
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), industrial engineers typically hold a bachelor's degree.
Sometimes the typical education identified by the BLS differs a bit from the reality of the how much education current workers actually have. The donut shows the education level held by people currently working as industrial and health/safety engineers as reported in responses to the American Community Survey.
Details: Education and training recommended for industrial engineers

Industrial engineers need a bachelor’s degree, typically in industrial engineering. However, many industrial engineers have degrees in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, manufacturing engineering, industrial engineering technology, or general engineering. Students interested in studying industrial engineering should take high school courses in mathematics, such as algebra, trigonometry, and calculus; computer science; and sciences such as chemistry and physics.

Bachelor’s degree programs include lectures in classrooms and practice in laboratories. Courses include statistics, production systems planning, and manufacturing systems design, among others. Many colleges and universities offer cooperative education programs in which students gain practical experience while completing their education.

Several colleges and universities offer 5-year degree programs in industrial engineering that lead to a bachelor’s and master’s degree upon completion, and several more offer similar programs in mechanical engineering. A graduate degree allows an engineer to work as a professor at a college or university or to engage in research and development. Some 5-year or even 6-year cooperative education plans combine classroom study with practical work, permitting students to gain experience and to finance part of their education.

Programs in industrial engineering are accredited by ABET.

Details: Licensing and certification recommended for industrial engineers

Licensure is not required for entry-level positions as an industrial engineer. A Professional Engineering (PE) license, which allows for higher levels of leadership and independence, can be acquired later in one’s career. Licensed engineers are called professional engineers (PEs). A PE can oversee the work of other engineers, sign off on projects, and provide services directly to the public. State licensure generally requires

  • A degree from an ABET-accredited engineering program
  • A  passing score on the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam
  • Relevant work experience, typically at least 4 years
  • A passing score on the Professional Engineering (PE) exam.

The initial FE exam can be taken after one earns a bachelor’s degree. Engineers who pass this exam are commonly called engineers in training (EITs) or engineer interns (EIs). After meeting work experience requirements, EITs and EIs can take the second exam, called the Principles and Practice of Engineering.

Each state issues its own licenses. Most states recognize licensure from other states, as long as the licensing state’s requirements meet or exceed their own licensure requirements. Several states require continuing education for engineers to keep their licenses.

The Society of Manufacturing Engineers offers certification, which requires a minimum of 8 years of a combination of education related to manufacturing and at least 4 years of work experience.

Education level of Industrial and Health/Safety Engineers
About 73% of industrial and health/safety engineers have at least a bachelor's degree.
Education attained by industrial and health/safety engineers
None
High School
Some College
Associate's Degree
Bachelor's Degree
Master's Degree
Professional Degree
Doctorate
Top college degrees
Here are the top college degrees held by the 72% of people in this job who have at least a bachelor's degree. Some of degrees may link to multiple programs due to the way Census classifies college majors. Click on a program to learn more about career opportunities for people who major in that field.
  1. Mechanical Engineering
  2. Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
  3. Electrical Engineering
  4. Engineering
  5. Chemical Engineering
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College majors held by industrial and health/safety engineers
This table shows the college majors held by people working as industrial and health/safety engineers. If you see "**" before the name of a degree/program, that means this field is one that the Department of Education believes is preparatory for this career. However, you can see from this list that those recommendations are far from your only path to this job!
Salary comparison for bachelor's only
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Career salary (tail) versus Career/Major salary (dot)
Does the bachelor's-only salary rise or fall with this major?
$62K$102K
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Median
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Salary for all workers
For people with this career and major
Median
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Middle 80%
Education for Career and Major
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Master's
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Workers with this career/major
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The link between degrees and this career
With the following sankey diagram, you can follow the top ten bachelor's degrees held by people working as industrial and health/safety engineers, and then, in turn, you can see the 10 occupations that hire the most of each degree's graduates. We hope this provides ideas for similar jobs and similar fields of study.
Expand degrees
Mechanical Engineeri...Industrial and Manuf...Electrical Engineeri...General EngineeringChemical EngineeringBusiness Management ...General BusinessBiologyIndustrial Productio...Civil EngineeringAll other degreesThis jobTop 10 majors
Where are the jobs
State-by-state employment numbers
Some careers tend to be centered in specific parts of the country. For example, most jobs in fashion are in New York or California. Let's see if your dream job is easy to find in your dream location! We have a few choices for viewing the data that can help you get a full employment picture.
Select a state to see local area details
Number of Industrial and Health/Safety Engineers per 1,000 workers (ACS)
AKMEWIVTNHWAIDMTNDMNILMINYMAORUTWYSDIAINOHPANJCTRICANVCONEMOKYWVVAMDDEAZNMKSARTNNCSCDCOKLAMSALGAHITXFLPR
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Job density versus job count
Which states hire the most industrial engineers? We wonder if that's a fair question since states come in all sizes, so instead let's start with the question of which states have the highest density of people working as industrial engineers. You can choose to view the number of jobs per state if you prefer.
Salaries by state
Let's get a feel for where industrial engineers earn the highest salaries. There are several choices for which data we consider and how we view that data, and each can lead to different conclusions, so please read on...
Median salary versus state ratio
We use two methods to compare salaries across states:
  • In-state comparisons: the ratio of median (middle) salaries for industrial and health/safety engineers compared to the median salary for all people working in each state, or
  • Median salary: the unaltered median salaries for industrial and health/safety engineers.
We hope the ratio allows perspective about how salaries may compare to the regional cost-of-living.
The darkest shading corresponds to states in which industrial and health/safety engineers earn the highest salary when compared to other jobs in the state. We think this figure might be a better indicator than the actual salary for your buying power as a state resident.
Select a state to see local area details
Location-adjusted median salary for Industrial and Health/Safety Engineers (ACS for all specialties)
AKMEWIVTNHWAIDMTNDMNILMINYMAORUTWYSDIAINOHPANJCTRICANVCONEMOKYWVVAMDDEAZNMKSARTNNCSCDCOKLAMSALGAHITXFLPR
Employment
2% of Industrial and health/safety engineers are working part time.
We’ve found that some jobs have a huge number of part-time workers, and typically that is because they are unable to find full-time work or the job itself can’t provide full-time hours. With 2% part-time workers, this occupation has a lower percentage of part-time workers than 94% of careers.
2%0%20%40%60%80%100%
Employer types
This donut shares the break-down of workers by employer type, giving us a picture of what employers most typically hire for this career.
Employers of undefined (ACS)
Private for-profit
Private not-for-profit
Local government
State government
Federal government
Self-employed incorporated
Self-employed not incorporated
Working without pay
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Distribution: Salaries of industrial and health/safety engineers by type of employer
Here are the salary distributions based on employer type.
$79K$79K$85K$91K$75K$70K$83K$53K$0$50,000$100,000$150,000Working without paySelf-employed incorporatedFederal governmentState governmentLocal governmentPrivate not-for-profitPrivate for-profitAll
Gender
Industrial and health/safety engineers and gender
With 21% women, this occupation has a lower percentage of women than 64% of careers.
Gender of Industrial and health/safety engineers
Men (79%)
Women (21%)
Distribution: salaries by gender
Does gender greatly influence your salary in this career? The closer the bars are, the less discrepancy there is.
$74K$80K$0$100K$200K$300KWomenMen
We only include salary data when the survey error is less than 20%, so you may see only partial information for some categories.
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Context: Women in the workforce
How does this career compare to other careers with regard to the percentage of women in the career.
21%0%20%40%60%80%100%
Context: Salary inequity
The median salary for all full-time male workers in the US exceeds the full-time median salary for women by 19%. The situation is a little better for industrial and health/safety engineers, with the median salary for men 9% higher than the median salary for women.
9%0%20%40%60%80%100%
Race/Origin
Race and origin of Industrial and health/safety engineers
This donut shows the distribution of race and origin among those employed as Industrial and health/safety engineers.
Race/origin of industrial and health/safety engineers
White (79% )
Asian (11% )
Black (5% )
Multiracial (2% )
Other (2% )
American Indian (1% )
Hispanic (0% )
Pacific Islander (0% )
Distribution: salaries by race/origin
Some careers might have a pay disparity based on race or origin, the closer the below bars are the less of a discrepancy is present.
$69K$72K$72K$78K$79K$80K$83K$0$50K$100K$150KBlackMultiracialOtherAmerican IndianHispanicWhiteAsian
We only include salary data when the survey error is less than 20%, so you may see only partial information for some categories.