From Industrial Age titans to Digital Age pioneers, the Lehigh Valley has a tradition of manufacturing excellence, and it's growing.

Available natural resources, a skilled workforce, and proximity to large population centers drove Lehigh Valley's first industrial revolution. Those same fundamentals are behind the new, more diversified Lehigh Valley manufacturing sector that is celebrated during Manufacturing Week from Oct. 6-13. 

“We embrace that as part of our culture and our heritage, of being makers, of making and producing goods. You know, people say we don't make things in America anymore. Well, 18% of our economy in the Lehigh Valley is manufacturing,” Don Cunningham, President and CEO of Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp. (LVEDC), told a group of small business leaders recently.

Leading Contributor to GDP

About 750 manufacturers produce a collective output of $8.4 billion annually. That represents 18% of the Lehigh Valley’s $47 billion Gross Domestic Product. Nationally, manufacturing is 12% of the United States’ GDP.

Family-Sustaining Jobs

The average salary for a manufacturing employee in the Lehigh Valley is about $76,000. Manufacturing employs about 37,000 people in the region, and that workforce is growing, with nearly 4,500 manufacturing jobs added in the last five years.

Nationally Competitive

The Lehigh Valley ranks in the top 15% of markets nationally for manufacturing, based on its annual economic output of $8.4 billion.  

Diverse Products

Manufacturers in the Lehigh Valley turn out a multitude of products that are used in businesses, entertainment, health care, and homes nationally and internationally.

Advanced Manufacturing makes up more than half of the Lehigh Valley’s manufacturing GDP, at $4.7 billion.

Food and Beverage Manufacturing employs about 6,800 people who make everything from drinks to snacks to pet food.

Another 6,700 people work at the Lehigh Valley’s 170 Life Sciences firms, producing equipment and technology critical to health care.

Semiconductors that are relied on by Google, Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon, Meta, AWS, Netflix, Nokia, and the Department of Defense are developed, produced, and assembled in the Lehigh Valley

Other manufacturing sectors include Metal and Mineral, Building Supplies, Defense, Chemical, and Consumer Products.

Prominent Brands

Many well-known names in manufacturing are based in the Lehigh Valley or have operations here.

Those Peeps you devour at Easter? They were made at Just Born in Bethlehem.

That Mack you admired on the highway? It was assembled at Mack Trucks in Macungie.

The InteliSwab® COVID-19 Rapid Test you relied on to keep your family safe at the peak of the pandemic? It was designed and produced by OraSure Technologies in Bethlehem.

Watch a video about manufacturing in the Lehigh Valley here.  

(Photo courtesy of FLSmidth)