Editor’s note: This story is not being updated as we consider alternate ways to share jobs data. Stay tuned!

How many jobs did the manufacturing industry gain or lose in the past month and year-to-year?

Each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides a glimpse into the answer, using a sampling of payrolls in various sectors to estimate shifts in the state of U.S. employment. Economists and industry executives alike use this data to check the pulse of the economy and forecast future trends.

Manufacturing Dive has created two charts to track employment data month-to-month and help manufacturing executives with their forecasting needs.

Manufacturing jobs declined in March when seasonally adjusted, but unadjusted figures show uptick

All employees in manufacturing, with and without seasonal adjustments

In addition to overall employment trends for the manufacturing sectors, which is shown in the chart above, the BLS also breaks down monthly payroll job estimates for more specific categories of firms.

A Manufacturing Dive analysis found the agency calculates manufacturing jobs for at least 19 broad subsectors and 65 specific industry groups based on the North American Industry Classification System. For example, food manufacturing is considered a subsector, which includes the animal food manufacturing industry group.

We’ve gathered and visualized some of the available monthly data in a table below, showing subsectors on the first page and industry groups on subsequent chart pages.

Food, chemical and transportation equipment manufacturing saw the largest monthly job gains in February

A preliminary estimate of jobs in manufacturing subsectors and industry groups, plus their share of total industry jobs and yearlong gains or losses, for February 2023.
Curious about data in your specific industry? Use the search bar below to quickly filter through detailed categories. Try typing 'electronic,' as an example.

A note on the data and methodology

The data used in this story was retrieved from the BLS’ Current Employment Statistics, which provides monthly estimates based on payroll data.

While the data is helpful to estimate workforce gains and losses, there are a few caveats worth noting:

  • The data excludes workers who are not on company payrolls. As such, shifts in this dataset may not fully reflect the labor market.

  • The BLS provides both seasonally adjusted and not seasonally adjusted monthly jobs estimates. The agency notes its adjusted data can eliminate expected seasonal cycles.

Historical data can be retrieved from the BLS by using the series report tool. Manufacturing Dive used this tool to retrieve employment figures from the past 10 years for more than 80 data series of not-seasonally adjusted industry jobs.

We’ve made the list publicly available for ease of reference.

Editor's note: Is there other information you would like to see visualized? We’d love to hear your thoughts, email us at [email protected]