Manufacturers in Arizona: fewer plants than most states, better paid, and built around chips and aircraft

This report is for buyers looking for Arizona machine shops, electronics assemblers and contract manufacturers, engineers and technicians weighing Arizona employers, and B2B sellers covering the state's plants. It gives the federal count and why Arizona's pay is so high, the chip and aerospace clusters, the county split, the public companies based here and how to prospect the market.

Arizona manufacturing in numbers

All figures in this table are from the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP) for 2023, covering NAICS 31 to 33:

Ranking the CBP state file ourselves, Arizona is 25th by manufacturing employees and sixth by average manufacturing pay, behind California, Massachusetts, Washington, Connecticut and Wyoming. Manufacturing is 6.0% of Arizona's private-sector jobs, below the national 8.8%, so the state's services economy is far bigger than its factories.

Where the pay comes from

Average pay here is our own division of payroll by employees. Three subsectors, fabricated metal, computers and electronics, and transportation equipment, have 1,438 plants but 78,493 employees, 45% of the state's manufacturing jobs, all paying well above the US manufacturing average of $73,202.

Chips and aircraft

The detailed codes show the two clusters behind those numbers:

Aircraft manufacturing itself (336411) has 11 Arizona plants, but its employee total is not reported here: the Census Bureau published it with a high-noise flag, meaning the noise it adds to protect confidentiality changed the figure by 5% or more.

Other sources count the chip industry differently. The Greater Phoenix Economic Council (GPEC), citing Lightcast data for early 2023, puts semiconductor and electronic component manufacturing employment in Greater Phoenix at 30,499, about twice CBP's statewide count, and calls the region the fourth-largest US metro for that employment. GPEC names Intel and TSMC among the companies operating in the region and onsemi, Microchip Technology, Amkor Technology and ASM America among those headquartered there. Use CBP for comparisons with other places, and remember that it describes March 2023.

Where the plants are

Maricopa County has 68% of the plants and 74% of the jobs, and Pima County, around Tucson, is the only other large center. Pinal County, between the two metros, has fewer plants but larger ones, as does Yuma.

Plant size

The first row adds the Census classes 1 to 4 (1,707), 5 to 9 (777) and 10 to 19 (658); the last adds 250 to 499 (70), 500 to 999 (18) and 1,000 or more (17). CBP counts establishments with paid employees, not companies: each plant or location counts once, headquarters are offices, and owner-only shops are excluded. Employment is a mid-March 2023 count.

Public manufacturers headquartered in Arizona

In SEC EDGAR, 28 companies with a stock listing and a manufacturing SIC code have an Arizona business address. The top ten by revenue, confirmed against each company's latest 10-K:

Revenue is company-wide, and most of these companies make much of their product outside Arizona. GPEC's public company guide covers the region's listed companies across all industries; for chips in detail, see semiconductor companies in Arizona.

Finding and vetting Arizona manufacturers

1. Start with the region's own lists. GPEC's manufacturing and semiconductor pages name firms operating in Greater Phoenix, from Boeing and Honeywell to Dexcom, Lucid Motors and Medtronic, plus semiconductor suppliers such as Air Products, EMD Electronics and Benchmark.
2. Use the trade group. The Arizona Manufacturers Council is the state affiliate of the National Association of Manufacturers, part of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry; membership is free for chamber members in manufacturing.
3. Ask the MEP center about capabilities, not names. The Arizona Manufacturing Extension Partnership, in Phoenix, is the state's NIST MEP center.
4. Check certifications for the work. Aerospace and defense suppliers should hold AS9100 and, for defense articles, ITAR registration; medical device suppliers ISO 13485.
5. Read the safety record in OSHA's establishment search, which includes Arizona's state-plan inspections.

Prospecting Arizona manufacturers

Arizona's market is lopsided: 3,142 plants with fewer than 20 employees, and 105 with 250 or more that employ a large share of the workforce. The big sites buy through corporate procurement and supplier qualification programs, so a new vendor usually starts with a small, well-defined job. The small shops, especially the 381 machine shops and fastener makers, often supply those big sites, and their owners buy fast when a new contract lands.

Worked example: a cleanroom garment service

Illustrative example. Saguaro, its 40% assumption and its rates are made up; the plant counts come from the Census Bureau.

Saguaro Cleanroom Services (saguarocleanroom.example) launders and rents cleanroom garments and supplies ESD-safe consumables.

• Arizona plants in semiconductors and electronic components (99), instruments (100), medical equipment (195) and aerospace (69): 463.
• At Maricopa's share of the state's plants (68%), about 315 are in the Phoenix area.
• Saguaro assumes 40% run controlled environments: about 126 accounts. Two contacts each (facilities or EHS manager and the production manager), a 6% reply rate, and one trial per three conversations gives about 5 new plants.

The research is in knowing which plants are adding cleanroom space or a production line. Bebop can search for "Phoenix-area electronics, medical device and aerospace manufacturers with 50 to 499 employees expanding a cleanroom or hiring production technicians" and write a playbook for each.

Subject: Cleanroom garments for [Company]'s [site] expansion

Hi [first name],

I saw [Company] is [adding cleanroom space / hiring production technicians] in [city]. More people in gowns usually means the garment program's sizing, turnaround and particle counts get stretched first.

We run cleanroom garment programs for Phoenix-area plants with weekly pickup and test reports for every batch. Would a short review of your current program in [month] be useful?

[Your name], Saguaro Cleanroom Services

Next step: see how plants buy and who signs in the manufacturing industry guide.