San Antonio’s manufacturing direct employment rose only slightly in the five-year period ending in 2016 but the sector’s overall economic impact grew 28 percent, mostly due to technology advances and higher skills, a new report stated Tuesday.

The “San Antonio’s Manufacturing Industry: Economic Impact in 2016” report was presented Tuesday during a luncheon event of the San Antonio Manufacturers Association attended by more than 200 people.

The 2016 impact in 2016 was $40.5 billion, making manufacturing “one of the largest sectors of the San Antonio economy,” according to the report compiled by Trinity University professor Mary Stefl and retired Trinity professor Richard Butler for the association and the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation.

The report updates Butler and Stefl’s previous manufacturing-sector report last released in 2012, which said manufacturing companies contributed $22.5 billion into the local economy in 2011.

The economic impact includes so-called “multiplier effects” for products produced in the San Antonio metropolitan area and sold to customers outside the state.

The area’s workforce at 1,544 manufacturing companies rose only to 51,904 in 2016 from 51,026 in 2011, but the total payroll increased to $2.99 billion in 2016 from $2.42 billion in 2011, a 24 percent increase.

Manufacturing employees in 2016 made an average of $57,507, including benefits, compared to the $46,891 for all workers in the San Antonio area last year, according to the report.

The gap between manufacturing compensation and average wages in the San Antonio area is 23 percent. In 2001, the gap was smaller, 13 percent.

The difference is not new. “The average salary in manufacturing has been consistently higher than the regional average over the past two decades,” the report stated.

Wage gains stem from manufacturing’s shift to high-technology, high-skilled job categories, according to the report.

The best-paying manufacturing jobs are in the transportation sector, including aerospace companies and the Toyota assembly plant. Average annual transportation wages in 2016 were $68,175.

The transportation sector also was the fastest-growing in employment. The sector shedding the most jobs was the “diversified products” category, 80 percent of which is food and beverage manufacturing, Butler and Stefl said.

Butler and Stefl said it is difficult to determine San Antonio’s largest economic sector because they study the sectors in different years. For 2015, the health care and biosciences sector’s economic impact was reported at $37 billion, but it now might be about the same as manufacturing as the area’s two largest sectors.

“Health care has twice as many employees, but the salaries are not as high,” Stefl said. Butler added: “The military is pretty big, too, but no one has measured it recently.”

San Antonio Manufacturing Association CEO and President Rey Chavez said the report’s main message to area manufacturers is “they are being noticed, and how much manufacturing is here. It’s not just Toyota. This study will be a recruitment and retention tool.”

The future of manufacturing, Chavez said, will be increased production and increased skills required to operate more complex machinery.

“My personal goal to see a $10 billion increase in economic impact, to $50 billion” in the area over the next five years, Chavez said.

“Manufacturing is the fabric of our nation. There’s nothing we use that isn’t manufactured,” he said.

Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said that exporting manufacturing goods is critical to the area’s economic health.

“We know that if we don’t export goods and services more than we bring in goods and services, we will be a poor city,” Wolff said.

dhendricks@express-news.net