Industrial Engineers
Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI metropolitan area. Estimated employment 17,350.
Where you sit in the distribution
That is the median — half of industrial engineers in Detroit earn more.
$104,110 in Detroit buys what $103,800 buys across the country as a whole.
Detroit's regional price parity is 100.3 — almost exactly the national average — the nominal figure is close to the real one here, which is not true of most large metros. Adjusted figures for other metros are in the nearby-metros table below.
What comes next
Median offered base pay by seniority for Industrial Engineers in Detroit, classified from job titles on visa filings.
The same job, elsewhere in Michigan
Adjusted figures apply each metro's regional price parity, so the columns are directly comparable.
| Metro area | Median | Adjusted | RPP | vs. Detroit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ann Arbor | $105,610 | $104,700 | 100.9 | +0.9% |
| Midland | $104,700 | $113,900 | 91.9 | +9.7% |
| Detroit This page | $104,110 | $103,800 | 100.3 | — |
| Bay City | $102,590 | $111,600 | 91.9 | +7.5% |
| Flint | $102,360 | $110,000 | 93.0 | +6.0% |
| Grand Rapids | $98,940 | $103,600 | 95.5 | −0.2% |
| Lansing | $98,260 | $103,400 | 95.0 | −0.3% |
| Monroe | $97,770 | $104,600 | 93.5 | +0.7% |
Price parity and difference against Detroit are in the full table on wider screens.
Who pays what
Median offered salary from visa filings, which disclose employer, title and exact figure. Government wage surveys never publish at this level.
| Employer | Median offer | Range | Filings | vs. metro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rivian Automotive | $150,696 | $100k – $186k | 8 | +44.7% |
| Brose North America | $138,432 | $75k – $140k | 5 | +33.0% |
| Fca US | $130,044 | $89k – $149k | 20 | +24.9% |
| General Motors | $119,070 | $104k – $152k | 28 | +14.4% |
| Detroit Diesel | $107,241 | $96k – $133k | 7 | +3.0% |
| Ford Motor | $103,022 | $73k – $150k | 22 | −1.0% |
| Purem Novi | $100,000 | $90k – $100k | 5 | −3.9% |
Offer ranges and filing counts are in the full table on wider screens.
Nominal against real
The same median, once as published and once restated in 2025 dollars.
Published pay rose 21.9% over the five years to 2025. Adjusted for inflation it still rose 2.6% — pay has outrun prices since 2021. The two lines meet at the right edge by construction, since 2025 is the base year.
How this page was made
- Wage data
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 release. Public domain.
- Price parity
- Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Price Parities, 2024.
- Employer pay
- Department of Labor, Labor Condition Application disclosures, FY 2025. The table draws on 95 certified filings across 7 employers.
- Career ladder
- Seniority classified from job titles on the same visa filings; levels shown only with five or more filings each and a strictly rising progression.
- Inflation
- Real figures deflate by CPI-U annual averages (BLS, all items, US city average).
- Employment
- 17,350 employed in this occupation in the metro (BLS estimate; excludes the self-employed).
- Occupation
- SOC 17-2112, Industrial Engineers. Mapped to our taxonomy as industrial-engineers.
Percentiles are reported exactly as released and are never interpolated between published values. Visa filings record offered base salary at time of application, exclude equity and bonus, and skew toward larger employers — treat the employer table as a floor, not an average. We take no payment from employers, recruiters or anyone else for how any figure is presented.