Like many of you, I receive unsolicited messages and emails from recruiters on a regular basis. One thing I've noticed is that while most jobs tend to follow predictable salary ranges, jobs in manufacturing seem to want more experience and yet offer much less money. An email I got today was advertising internal audit roles and mentioned 100-120k for 5+ years experience in public accounting, yet a manfacturing job in the same email wanted the same amount of experience and offered 60k, which is basically a second year associate's salary in this market.
So what's the deal with manufacturing companies being so cheap? You'd have to be a complete idiot to take a $40k pay cut IMO.