Industrial Production Manager Salary in Georgia: Pay by Experience, City & Take-Home

An industrial production manager in Georgia earns a median of $127,820 a year, or about $61.45 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). Most of the field lands between $99,110 at the 25th percentile and $161,270 at the 75th, with the top 10 percent clearing $194,480. That median sits just above the national figure of $126,060, so Georgia pays this role competitively.

How Georgia compares to the national median

Georgia pays industrial production managers slightly more than the country as a whole. The state median of $127,820 runs $1,760 above the national median of $126,060, per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). That is a small premium, a little over 1 percent, but it cuts the other way from what many people assume about manufacturing pay in the Southeast.

The state mean tells a similar story. Georgia’s average for the role is $132,340, which sits above the state median of $127,820. When the mean runs higher than the median, it usually means a cluster of high earners at the top is pulling the average up. You can see that pull in the percentile spread: the gap from the 50th percentile ($127,820) to the 90th ($194,480) is wide, about $66,660. The takeaway for someone weighing an offer here is plain. A first management job will not start near the median. The median is what you reach after several years of running a line or a plant floor, and the real money lives in the senior tier.

Industrial production manager pay by experience in Georgia

Pay for this role moves in a steep line from entry to senior. BLS reports the full percentile spread for Georgia, and that spread is the cleanest way to read experience, since production managers earn more as they take on bigger lines, more direct reports, and tighter cost targets. The numbers below are the actual Georgia percentile points from BLS OEWS 2025, mapped to the career stage each typically represents.

The jump from entry to median is large, about $52,100. That reflects how much weight this job puts on a proven track record. A new manager at the 10th percentile, $75,720, is usually a shift supervisor or first-line lead who just stepped up. By the 25th percentile, $99,110, you are running a department with real budget authority. The 75th percentile, $161,270, is plant-manager territory or a site lead with multiple lines reporting in. The 90th, $194,480, tends to be multi-site or regional operations roles at large manufacturers. Each step up is worth tens of thousands a year, so the path to higher pay here is more about scope of responsibility than years on the clock alone.

It is worth pausing on the size of each step. From the 25th percentile ($99,110) to the median ($127,820) is a raise of $28,710. From the median to the 75th ($161,270) is another $33,450. From the 75th to the 90th ($194,480) is $33,210. The increments stay roughly constant in dollar terms, which means the percentage raises shrink as you climb. A move from early career to mid-career is worth about a 29 percent bump, while a move from experienced to senior is worth about 21 percent. The practical read for a Georgia candidate: the biggest proportional gains come in the first two stages of a management career, and the way you secure them is by quickly proving you can hold a line to budget and schedule. After that, the dollar gains stay large but each one demands a meaningfully bigger job. The full spread from the 10th to the 90th percentile is $118,760, which is one of the wider ranges you will find for a single management title in one state, and it tells you how much individual scope and sector choice drive pay here.

Industrial production manager salary by Georgia metro

Where you work inside Georgia changes the number more than most people expect. The biggest employer of these managers is metro Atlanta, but it is not the highest payer. Smaller industrial metros with heavy manufacturing footprints pay several thousand dollars more at the median. Here are the five Georgia metros BLS reports for this role, ranked by median pay.

Savannah tops the list at $136,620, helped by its port logistics and the manufacturing plants that cluster around it. Gainesville and Augusta are close behind at $136,460 and $135,660. The gap between the top metro, Savannah, and the lowest, Dalton at $116,720, is $19,900, which is real money for the same job title in the same state. Atlanta, where 2,630 of the state’s 5,510 managers work, sits at $127,660, almost exactly the state median. That makes sense: when one metro holds nearly half the jobs, its pay anchors the statewide figure. Dalton, the carpet and flooring capital, comes in lowest at $116,720, which reflects a concentration of a single industry rather than a low-skill workforce. If you are mobile, a Savannah or Gainesville plant role can mean close to $20,000 more a year than the same title in Dalton.

The employment counts tell their own story about where the work is. Atlanta’s 2,630 managers account for roughly 48 percent of the statewide total of 5,510, so almost half the field is concentrated in one metro that pays right at the median. The four smaller metros, Augusta (400), Savannah (250), Dalton (220), and Gainesville (190), together hold about 1,060 of these roles, and three of those four pay above Atlanta. That is the pattern to remember: the highest-paying Georgia markets for this job are the mid-sized industrial metros, not the capital. There is a tradeoff, though. The smaller metros post far fewer openings at any given time because the total headcount is small, so the higher median in Savannah or Gainesville comes with a thinner job market. Atlanta offers volume and mobility between employers; the smaller metros offer a higher median for a single strong role. A candidate early in their career often does better building a track record in Atlanta, where switching plants is easier, then moving to a higher-paying metro once the resume can command a plant-lead title.

One more thing the metro table makes clear is that there is no large rural discount in Georgia for this role. Even Dalton, the lowest-paying metro on the list, posts a median of $116,720, which is within striking distance of the national median of $126,060. Industrial production management is a salaried, credential-heavy job, and the pay holds up across the state rather than collapsing outside Atlanta the way some hourly roles do.

Take-home pay after tax in Georgia

Gross salary is not what lands in your account. Georgia taxes income at a flat rate, and federal tax plus FICA take their share before you see a dollar. The table below breaks down the four career stages, entry through senior, showing federal income tax, FICA (Social Security and Medicare), Georgia state tax, and what is left as net annual and net monthly pay. These figures use 2026 tax rules for a single filer with standard deductions.

At the median, a Georgia industrial production manager keeps $91,875 of a $127,820 salary, an effective combined tax rate of about 28.1 percent. That works out to $7,656 a month, or about $3,534 every two weeks. The entry-level effective rate is lower, around 23.1 percent, because less income reaches the higher federal brackets, leaving an entry earner with $58,221 net or $4,852 a month. The experienced earner at the 75th percentile takes home $112,935, about $9,411 a month, at a 30 percent effective rate. The senior rate climbs to roughly 30.6 percent, leaving $134,984 net, or $11,249 a month, on a $194,480 salary. Notice how the net gap between stages stays substantial even after tax: a senior manager nets about $43,109 more a year than a median one, which shows that climbing the percentile ladder pays off well beyond what the rising tax rate claws back.

Georgia’s portion of the bill is the flat state income tax. On the median salary it comes to $6,243, on the entry salary $3,435, on the experienced salary $8,046, and on the senior salary $9,836. State tax is the smallest of the three deductions at every stage; federal income tax and FICA together do most of the work. That matters for offer comparisons because the state line is the only piece that changes when you cross a state border, and it is exactly the piece we look at next.

What Georgia’s income tax costs you versus a no-tax state. This is the comparison that matters if you are weighing an offer across state lines. Take the same $127,820 median salary and run it through Texas, which has no state income tax. In Texas, the median earner nets $98,118 a year. In Georgia, that same earner nets $91,875. The gap is $6,243 a year, the exact amount Georgia’s flat state income tax pulls out of a median paycheck. Over a decade, that difference adds up to more than $62,000 in nominal terms. It is the clearest single reason a Georgia offer needs to come in higher than a Texas offer to land you in the same place after tax, before you even look at cost of living.

That cost-of-living point is the one to finish on. Net pay minus local housing is the number that actually tells you how you will live. A $91,875 net in a lower-cost Georgia metro stretches further than a larger net in a high-rent coastal market, because housing is the biggest line in most household budgets. A manager netting $7,656 a month in Augusta or Gainesville, where housing runs well below the national average, has more real spending room than the same net would buy in San Francisco or Boston. Run your own number through the Georgia paycheck calculator before you compare offers, and if you want help modeling deductions and credits at filing time, tools like TurboTax walk through the Georgia return step by step.

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How to earn more as an industrial production manager in Georgia

The percentile spread shows there is real room above the median, and the path up is concrete. Here is what moves pay in this state specifically:

• Move toward Savannah, Augusta, or Gainesville. These metros pay a median of $135,660 to $136,620, roughly $8,000 to $9,000 above Atlanta’s $127,660 and close to $20,000 above Dalton. A plant role in a port or distribution corridor is one of the fastest geographic upgrades in the state.
• Push for plant-manager scope. The jump from the median ($127,820) to the 75th percentile ($161,270) is $33,450. That step comes from taking on a full site, multiple lines, and a capital budget rather than a single department.
• Earn a recognized operations credential. Lean Six Sigma Green or Black Belt, APICS CPIM, and a PMP are the certifications Georgia manufacturers ask for most in plant-leadership postings. You can stack these through self-paced courses on Coursera without leaving your current job.
• Specialize in a high-pay Georgia sector. The state’s aerospace, automotive, and food-processing plants tend to pay above the carpet and textile base. Matching your experience to those sectors lifts your floor.
• Build the data side of the job. Managers who can run ERP reporting, throughput analytics, and cost modeling get pulled into regional and multi-site roles, which is where the 90th-percentile pay of $194,480 lives.

Job outlook for production managers in Georgia

Georgia employs 5,510 industrial production managers as of the BLS OEWS 2025 release, with the heaviest concentration, 2,630, in metro Atlanta. The state’s manufacturing base spans automotive assembly, aerospace, food processing, carpet and flooring, and a growing logistics sector anchored by the Port of Savannah. That mix keeps steady demand for managers who can run a floor and hit cost targets. Augusta carries 400 of these roles and Savannah another 250, both well above what their population alone would suggest, which signals durable industrial employment outside Atlanta. If you are searching for openings across these metros, a job board like ZipRecruiter lets you filter by metro and salary band to see where the live postings sit.

Related and higher-paying roles in Georgia

It helps to see where this role sits against neighboring management and operations jobs in the same state. Using BLS Georgia medians, an industrial production manager out-earns both of the closest related roles by a wide margin. A purchasing agent in Georgia has a median of $74,530, which is $53,290 LESS than an industrial production manager in Georgia. A food service manager in Georgia has a median of $65,280, which is $62,540 LESS than an industrial production manager in Georgia. In short, the plant-management track pays a substantial premium over adjacent operations and procurement roles here.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), 2025 release; ThePayGuide 2026 tax modeling for Georgia (single filer, standard deduction). Last updated 2026. See our methodology.