Capital goods pay well.
That much is uncontroversial — Caterpillar salaries run from $40,920 for an assembly worker to $317,911 for a director, based on 12,151 Glassdoor submissions as of June 2026. Boeing’s range is even wider, from $43,694 for a warehouse worker to $477,788 for a vice president, across 37,615 salary reports.
What’s less obvious is that base salary is a genuinely poor predictor of what you’ll actually take home in this sector. Two engineers earning identical $95,000 salaries at two different capital goods companies can end up thousands of dollars apart in real annual value once you account for 401(k) match structures, PTO accrual policies, whether sick leave is separate from vacation, shift differentials, and profit-sharing bonuses.
This guide covers the pay by sector and career level — and then the part most salary articles skip entirely: what the benefits packages actually look like, and which companies deliver on them.
The Sectors Inside Capital Goods
“Capital goods” is a category, not an industry. It covers any company producing the machinery, equipment, and systems that other businesses use to make things. The pay varies meaningfully between these segments.
Aerospace and Defense
The highest-paying segment on average, driven by security clearance requirements, technical complexity, and long-cycle government contracts that insulate the sector from commercial demand swings.
Typical roles: aerospace engineer, systems engineer, avionics technician, manufacturing engineer, program manager, quality engineer.
Pay tends to run 10–20% above comparable roles in other capital goods segments, and security clearances add a further premium — a cleared engineer typically earns $10,000–$25,000 more than an uncleared engineer doing similar work.
Heavy Machinery and Construction Equipment
Caterpillar, John Deere, Komatsu, Volvo CE. This segment has the widest internal pay spread of any — assembly-line roles at the bottom, engineering and executive leadership at the top, with a strong middle band of skilled trades and technicians.
Typical roles: CNC machinist, welder, assembly technician, mechanical engineer, production supervisor, dealer service technician, plant manager.
Industrial Automation and Controls
Honeywell, Rockwell Automation, Siemens, Emerson, ABB. This is where capital goods overlaps with software, and it shows in the compensation — controls engineers and automation specialists earn closer to tech-sector rates than traditional manufacturing rates.
Typical roles: controls engineer, PLC programmer, automation technician, systems integrator, industrial software engineer, field service engineer.
Electrical Equipment and Power Systems
GE Vernova, Eaton, Schneider Electric, Hubbell. Grid modernization, data center construction, and electrification have made this one of the fastest-growing segments by hiring volume.
Typical roles: electrical engineer, power systems engineer, test technician, project engineer, applications engineer.
Industrial Conglomerates and Diversified Manufacturers
3M, Illinois Tool Works, Parker Hannifin, Dover. These companies span multiple end markets, which means internal mobility across very different businesses is unusually available — a genuine career advantage that doesn’t show up in salary data.
Pay by Career Level
Entry Level (0–2 years)
Production and assembly roles: $36,000–$52,000. Caterpillar’s posted starting wage for shop machine operation at its Pomona, Missouri facility was $18.25/hour — roughly $38,000 annually before overtime. Boeing warehouse roles start around $43,694.
Entry engineering: $70,000–$85,000 for a mechanical or electrical engineer with a bachelor’s degree and no prior experience. Aerospace and defense entry engineering runs $75,000–$92,000.
Technician and skilled trade apprentice: $42,000–$58,000, with structured wage step increases as apprenticeship milestones are completed.
What matters at this level: overtime availability. In 24/7 manufacturing environments, an entry production worker with regular overtime can add $8,000–$15,000 to annual income. That’s not a marginal difference at this salary level — it’s the difference between struggling and comfortable.
Mid-Level (3–8 years)
Skilled trades: $58,000–$85,000. Certified welders, CNC machinists with programming ability, industrial electricians, and millwrights sit in this band. AWS-certified welders and journeyman electricians at the upper end.
Engineers: $88,000–$125,000. This is where the sector spread becomes visible — a mechanical engineer at a heavy equipment manufacturer might be at $95,000 while a controls engineer at an automation company is at $118,000 for equivalent experience.
Supervisors and team leads: $75,000–$105,000. Production supervisors, maintenance leads, and quality supervisors.
Field service engineers: $80,000–$115,000, plus per diem and travel compensation that can add $10,000–$20,000 in real annual value for road-heavy roles.
Senior Level (8+ years)
Senior and principal engineers: $125,000–$175,000. Boeing engineers report a median total compensation around $138,000 with base near $132,000. Lockheed Martin senior engineering roles run $140,000–$180,000.
Engineering and operations managers: $130,000–$190,000.
Plant managers: $115,000–$185,000 depending on facility size and P&L responsibility.
Directors and above: $200,000–$480,000. Caterpillar directors top out around $317,911; Boeing VPs reach $477,788.
The Benefits That Actually Determine Your Take-Home
This is where the real differences between capital goods employers live, and where most salary comparisons fall apart.
401(k) Match Structures Vary Enormously
Caterpillar’s plan is among the strongest in the sector. According to employee reports on Glassdoor, Caterpillar offers “up to 6% matching, plus an additional 3–5% annually submitted without matching (percentage based on a combination of your age and length of time at company — the higher the total of the two, the higher the percentage).”
That second component matters more than people realize. A non-matching annual employer contribution of 3–5% on top of a 6% match means a long-tenured Caterpillar employee can see total employer retirement contributions approaching 11% of salary. On a $95,000 engineering salary, that’s roughly $10,450 annually in employer contributions — real compensation that never appears in a salary comparison.
Boeing offers an immediately vesting 401(k) with company match up to 10% of salary for many employee groups — one of the more generous structures in American manufacturing, and a recurring positive in Boeing employee reviews even from people critical of other aspects of the company.
PTO Policies Are Where Companies Quietly Differ
This is the single most under-discussed variable in capital goods compensation, and the differences are stark.
Caterpillar draws consistent criticism here. One Glassdoor benefits review states plainly: “very little PTO offered (cannot begin to accrue more until after 5 years with company). no paid sick time so must use PTO for sick days and doctors appointments.” The same reviewer noted the expectation to “work/complete work related tasks while out of office on approved PTO.”
That’s a meaningful real-world cost. If you need to use vacation days for illness and medical appointments, your effective vacation allowance is significantly lower than the headline number.
Boeing, by contrast, separates the two. A Boeing engineer explained the structure on Glassdoor’s community forum: “I have an engineering degree, so my contract states I get PTO accrued at a certain rate, as well as 80hrs sick time per year, plus if I have to leave work for something medical (not job related) there is basically free PTO for that, plus any other ‘personal business’ matters is also covered.”
Eighty hours of separate sick leave is two full weeks that don’t touch your vacation balance. Against Caterpillar’s structure, that’s a difference worth roughly $3,600 in real value for a $95,000 earner — before considering the quality-of-life factor of not having to choose between a doctor’s appointment and a vacation day.
Lockheed Martin takes a different approach entirely with its 9×80 schedule — nine-day work fortnights with every other Friday off. One long-tenured employee described it on Glassdoor: “Lockheed Martin pushes a work-life balance. Most employees enjoy 9×80 workweeks, meaning that we have every other Friday off. All employees have at least 3 weeks of vacation from the day you begin your career.”
Twenty-six additional days off per year from the 9×80 schedule alone, plus three weeks of vacation starting on day one rather than accrued over years. For anyone weighing offers, that’s an enormous non-salary difference.
Stock and Equity Participation
Capital goods companies handle equity very differently from tech companies, and the distinction matters.
Publicly traded manufacturers — Caterpillar, Boeing, Deere, Honeywell, 3M — typically offer employee stock purchase plans (ESPPs) allowing employees to buy company shares at a 5–15% discount, plus restricted stock units (RSUs) for salaried employees at senior individual contributor levels and above. RSU grants at these companies are meaningfully smaller than at tech firms — a senior engineer might receive $8,000–$25,000 annually in RSUs versus $80,000+ at a comparable tech company level.
Defense contractors — Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX, General Dynamics — follow similar structures, with the important caveat that defense stock performance is driven by government budget cycles rather than growth narratives. That means less upside volatility but also less downside risk than commercial manufacturers.
Profit sharing is more common in this sector than in tech. Several major capital goods employers distribute annual profit-sharing payments to hourly and salaried employees based on company financial performance. In strong years these can add 3–8% of annual salary. In weak years they can be zero — which is the trade-off.
Union Representation Changes the Math
A significant portion of capital goods manufacturing is unionized — the IAM at Boeing, the UAW at Deere and Caterpillar facilities, the USW at steel and metals operations.
Union contracts typically deliver: defined wage progressions with predictable step increases, cost-of-living adjustments, overtime rules that are enforced rather than aspirational, seniority-based job security, and in some cases, defined-benefit pensions that have largely disappeared elsewhere in the private sector.
The 2023 UAW contract settlement at John Deere substantially raised skilled trades wages, pushing senior hourly rates well above national manufacturing averages. Boeing’s 2024 IAM strike similarly resulted in significant wage gains for represented employees.
If you’re comparing a union role to a non-union role at similar base pay, the union position is usually worth more in total compensation — the difference just shows up in pension accrual, overtime protection, and predictable increases rather than in the headline number.
Companies With Strong Reputations
Lockheed Martin
Glassdoor: 4.1/5 | 83% would recommend | 4.2/5 work-life balance
The highest-rated major employer in aerospace and defense, and the work-life balance rating is genuinely unusual for the sector. The 9×80 schedule, three weeks of vacation from day one, and the mission-driven work consistently appear in positive reviews.
The honest caveat comes from employees themselves. The same reviewer who praised the schedule added: “Salary is competitive with the defense industry. In other words, do not go here to become rich.” Lockheed pays well against defense benchmarks and below tech benchmarks. If maximizing income is your primary goal, this isn’t the place. If sustainable, meaningful technical work at solid pay is what you want, it’s arguably the best option in the sector.
Management criticism is consistent and specific: “some managers have absolutely zero clue how anything actually gets done” appears in various forms across reviews. Large bureaucratic organizations are not known for excellent middle management, and Lockheed is no exception.
Caterpillar
Glassdoor: 4.0/5 | 4.1/5 compensation and benefits | Named to Newsweek’s America’s Greatest Workplaces in Manufacturing 2026
The compensation and benefits rating of 4.1 is among the highest in capital goods, and the 401(k) structure genuinely justifies it. Employees describe real internal mobility: “great company that allows room for growth if you apply yourself.”
The PTO structure is the clear weakness, as detailed above. The 2022 headquarters relocation from Peoria, Illinois to Irving, Texas also created genuine disruption for long-tenured employees who had built lives around the Midwest operation — a reminder that even stable manufacturers make decisions that upend individual careers.
For engineers and technologists, Caterpillar’s investment in autonomous equipment, remote operation systems, and machine telematics has created genuine software and systems roles at a company where you can see the physical output of your work.
John Deere
Glassdoor: 4.0/5 | 78% would recommend | 4.0/5 compensation and benefits
Deere’s ratings track Caterpillar’s closely, which makes sense given they compete for the same talent. The differentiator is Deere’s precision agriculture technology — autonomous tractors, GPS planting systems, machine learning applied to crop yield — which attracts a different profile of software and data engineers than traditional heavy equipment work.
The criticisms are what you’d expect from a cyclically sensitive manufacturer: “mass layoffs, projects can get boring” and importantly, “contractors don’t have benefits like PTO, 401k match.” That last point matters — Deere makes substantial use of contract workers during production upswings, and those workers bear the first impact of downturns while receiving none of the benefits described above. If you’re offered a contract position rather than direct employment, the compensation math is entirely different.
Companies Where the Picture Is More Complicated
Boeing
Glassdoor: 3.7/5 | 71% would recommend | 3.9/5 compensation and benefits
Boeing is genuinely difficult to evaluate simply. The compensation is strong — the salary range tops out higher than any other company in this article, the 401(k) match reaches 10%, and the sick leave structure is among the best in the sector. Employees regularly describe “good salary and plenty of OT opportunities” and “a lot of great people that are very down to earth.”
The counterweight is equally real and well-documented. The 737 MAX quality crises, the FAA scrutiny, the 2024 IAM strike, and successive rounds of workforce reduction have produced employee reviews describing “frequent layoffs and outsourcing to vendors” and “toxic culture and crab mentality.”
The practical guidance: Boeing is a company where the specific program and division matter more than the company name. Some programs are stable, well-funded, and technically exciting. Others are under sustained cost pressure. Research the specific division before accepting an offer, and ask directly about program funding stability in your interview.
Honeywell
Glassdoor: 3.7/5
Honeywell’s industrial automation business offers some of the more interesting hardware-plus-software work in capital goods. The consistent criticism is a history of cost-cutting and restructuring that has affected employee trust, plus compensation that some individual contributors describe as lagging market rates.
The shift away from defined-benefit pensions toward defined contribution plans removed one of Honeywell’s historical advantages over competitors. Employees who joined expecting the old benefits structure describe the transition as a real reduction in total compensation value.
3M
Glassdoor: 3.8/5
3M offers unusual career breadth — 60,000+ products across industrial, safety, healthcare, and consumer markets means genuine internal mobility across very different technical domains. The R&D culture is real, not marketing language.
The complication is PFAS litigation. Multi-billion dollar legal exposure has shaped company strategy, driven layoffs, and led to the spinoff of the healthcare division as Solventum. Prospective employees should understand that 3M in 2026 is meaningfully different from 3M five years ago, and should research the specific business unit’s position within the restructured company.
What Actually Increases Your Pay in This Sector
Certifications with immediate wage impact: AWS welding certification (particularly 6G pipe and pressure vessel), journeyman electrician license, CNC programming credentials, PLC programming certification (Allen-Bradley/Rockwell specifically), Six Sigma Green or Black Belt, PMP for project management tracks.
Security clearance, if you’re in defense: Secret clearance adds roughly $10,000–$15,000 in market value; Top Secret with SCI access adds substantially more. Clearances take months to process and are held by the employer, which is why cleared candidates are recruited aggressively.
Automation and controls skills, if you’re in manufacturing: The single largest wage differential within similar experience levels comes from the ability to program, troubleshoot, and integrate automated systems. A maintenance technician who can work on PLCs earns meaningfully more than one who can only do mechanical repair.
Willingness to relocate or travel: Field service engineers, commissioning engineers, and traveling technical specialists earn premiums plus per diem. For someone at the right life stage, this is one of the fastest paths to a high income in capital goods.
Moving from contractor to direct employment: As Deere employees noted, contract positions frequently lack the 401(k) match, PTO, and benefits that constitute a large share of total compensation. Converting to direct employment often delivers a bigger real income increase than a salary negotiation would.
Quick Reference
| Level | Production / Trades | Engineering | Management |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry (0–2 yrs) | $36,000–$52,000 | $70,000–$92,000 | — |
| Mid (3–8 yrs) | $58,000–$85,000 | $88,000–$125,000 | $75,000–$105,000 |
| Senior (8+ yrs) | $75,000–$100,000 | $125,000–$175,000 | $130,000–$190,000 |
| Executive | — | $175,000–$250,000 | $200,000–$480,000 |
Ranges based on Glassdoor salary submissions as of June–July 2026, BLS occupational data, and industry compensation reporting. Aerospace and defense typically runs 10–20% above these figures; security clearances add further premium.
Before accepting any capital goods offer, get the full benefits picture in writing — 401(k) match percentage and vesting schedule, PTO accrual rate, whether sick leave is separate, and what the profit-sharing history has actually been over the past five years. Two offers with identical base salaries can differ by $10,000+ in real annual value once those details are compared.
Research the specific employer and division at WiseWorq before you accept — because in this sector, the difference between a well-run plant and a struggling one shows up in employee reviews long before it shows up in a job posting.
Related WiseWorq Guides
- What Companies Are in the Capital Goods Field? — the full employer landscape with culture ratings and employee quotes
- How Many Jobs Are Available in Capital Goods? — sector-by-sector hiring volume and which roles are growing
- What Do Basic Industries Jobs Pay? — the raw materials sectors that supply capital goods manufacturers
- What Do Energy Jobs Pay? (2026 Guide) — how GE Vernova, Siemens Energy, and Honeywell compare on the energy side
- 50 Unique Interview Questions to Ask an Employer (2026) — including the benefits and program stability questions to ask before accepting
