Key Facts

• U.S. manufacturers and foreign investors announced 247,063 factory jobs through reshoring and foreign direct investment in 2025, and the Reshoring Initiative projects about 309,000 for 2026 (Reshoring Initiative 2025 Annual Report).
• Manufacturing job openings reached 584,000 in September 2026 (preliminary), up from 389,000 a year earlier (BLS JOLTS).
• Manufacturers made 313,000 hires that same month, down from 347,000 in August (BLS JOLTS).
• Federal law caps EB-3 “Other Workers” green cards, the permanent visa for entry-level, non-seasonal jobs, at 10,000 a year for every industry combined (8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(3)).
• Spouses and children count against that cap, and the employment-based limits behind it date from a 1990 law (Congressional Research Service).

Reshoring Announced 247,000 Factory Jobs in 2025

Reshoring manufacturing is no longer a talking point. It’s a steady stream of announced plants.

In 2025, companies announced 247,063 U.S. manufacturing jobs across 1,509 reshoring and foreign direct investment (FDI) cases, according to the Reshoring Initiative’s 2025 Annual Report.

That essentially matched 2024, the report says.

Reshoring, meaning U.S. companies bringing production home, accounted for 152,734 of those jobs (62%). Foreign companies building or expanding U.S. plants accounted for 94,329 (38%) (same source).

The Initiative projects about 309,000 announced jobs in 2026, based on announcements through June 30, 2026. That’s a forecast, not a count, but it points up.

Where the jobs are going

Five industries led 2025 announcements (Reshoring Initiative):

Industry	Jobs announced, 2025
Transportation equipment	48,786
Computer and electronic products	44,877
Chemicals (including pharmaceuticals)	37,265
Electrical equipment, appliances and components (including EV batteries)	36,188
Machinery	22,946

Texas led all states with 31,910 announced jobs, followed by North Carolina (21,387), Georgia (20,677), South Carolina (12,587) and Michigan (11,115) (same source).

Announced isn’t the same as filled

An announcement is a plan. Every one of those jobs still has to be staffed by a real person on a real shift.

The Reshoring Initiative says so itself: “Skilled Workforce Availability consistently emerges as one of the greatest long-term constraints on expanding U.S. manufacturing” (2025 Annual Report).

Its recommendations include apprenticeships, technical training and skilled immigration.

The Openings Are Already Here

Federal data shows the hiring demand is not hypothetical.

Manufacturers had 584,000 job openings in September 2026, an openings rate of 4.4%, according to preliminary BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) data released November 3.

A year earlier, the number was 389,000.

Hiring didn’t keep up. Manufacturers made 313,000 hires in September, down from 347,000 in August and only slightly above the 300,000 of September 2025 (BLS JOLTS).

Table 1: Manufacturing openings, hires and quits

Measure	Sept. 2025	Aug. 2026	Sept. 2026 (preliminary)
Job openings	389,000 (3.0%)	530,000 (4.0%)	584,000 (4.4%)
Hires	300,000 (2.4%)	347,000 (2.7%)	313,000 (2.5%)
Quits	n/a	205,000 (1.6%)	199,000 (1.6%)

The growth is in durable goods

Durable goods manufacturers, the group that makes vehicles, electronics, machinery and electrical equipment, had 403,000 openings in September 2026. A year earlier they had 248,000 (BLS JOLTS).

Nondurable goods openings rose too, from 141,000 to 180,000 (same source).

Those durable goods industries are the same ones leading reshoring announcements. The plants being announced and the openings being posted point in the same direction.

Quits are steady, which makes the gap harder to explain away

Manufacturing workers quit at a rate of 1.6% in September 2026, unchanged from August and below the 2.3% rate for all private employers (BLS JOLTS).

So the rise in openings isn’t mainly a turnover story. Manufacturers are trying to add workers, not just replace the ones who leave.

The Jobs Behind the Headlines Are Mostly Production Work

Reshoring press releases talk about investment dollars and advanced technology. The daily staffing need is on the production floor.

Assemblers and fabricators are a good example. They put together products and components, from electrical equipment to vehicles to machinery.

According to the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook:

Assemblers and fabricators	Figure
Jobs, 2025	1,799,500
Median pay, May 2025	$21.85/hour ($45,450/year)
Typical education	High school diploma or equivalent
Work experience required	None
Training	Moderate-term on-the-job training
Projected openings per year, 2025-35	About 177,500

BLS projects just 1% growth for the occupation over the decade. Most of those 177,500 annual openings come from replacing workers who move to other jobs or leave the workforce (same source).

This is an entry-level job. It needs no prior experience, and workers learn it on the job.

That matters for the immigration question, because it’s exactly the kind of job the law calls “unskilled labor.”

The One Permanent Visa for These Jobs Is Capped at 10,000

The U.S. has a green card category built for jobs like assembler, machine helper or production worker. It’s the EB-3 “Other Workers” category.

Federal law defines these workers as people “capable… of performing unskilled labor, not of a temporary or seasonal nature, for which qualified workers are not available in the United States” (8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(3)(A)(iii)).

That describes a year-round production job almost word for word.

Then the law sets the limit: “Not more than 10,000 of the visas made available under this paragraph in any fiscal year may be available” for Other Workers (8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(3)(B)).

10,000 for everyone, families included

That cap isn’t 10,000 for manufacturing. It’s 10,000 for every employer in every industry: factories, hotels, restaurants, warehouses, cleaning companies, nursing homes and more.

It also isn’t 10,000 workers. “Both principals and derivatives count against the annual numerical limits,” the Congressional Research Service explains. A worker’s spouse and children each use one of the 10,000 numbers.

EB3.work CEO John Dorer has estimated that about 3,000 of the 10,000 go to workers and about 7,000 to their spouses and children (Construction Dive, January 2026).

For fiscal year 2027, the category loses about 150 more numbers to an offset under the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) (Ahluwalia Law, November 2026).

A limit set in 1990

The employment-based green card limits date from a law passed in 1990 (Congressional Research Service). The 140,000 overall limit has not been raised since, and the 10,000 Other Workers sub-limit is still in the statute today.

The CRS noted that the overall limit was set when the U.S. economy was about half its size (same source, written in 2020).

Table 2: Manufacturing demand next to the Other Workers cap

Figure	Number	Period	Source
Reshoring and FDI jobs announced	247,063	2025	Reshoring Initiative
Reshoring and FDI jobs projected	About 309,000	2026 (forecast)	Reshoring Initiative
Manufacturing job openings	584,000	September 2026 (one month)	BLS JOLTS
Assembler and fabricator openings	About 177,500	Per year, 2025-35	BLS OOH
EB-3 Other Workers green cards, all industries, families included	10,000	Per fiscal year	8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(3)(B)

Read down the last column. Manufacturing alone posts more openings in a single month than the entire Other Workers category issues in a year, for every industry combined.

The Cap Is Why the Line Is Longer

A cap this small doesn’t just limit how many workers come. It decides how long every employer waits.

Each month the State Department’s Visa Bulletin sets a “final action date.” Only workers whose cases were filed before that date can get their green card.

In the November 2026 Visa Bulletin, the final action dates for most countries were:

EB-3 category	Final action date (all chargeability areas)
Skilled workers and professionals	June 15, 2024
Other Workers	June 1, 2022

Both categories are part of EB-3, and both draw from the same pool of visa numbers. The difference is that Other Workers has its own 10,000 sub-limit.

In November 2026, the Other Workers line was serving cases filed in June 2022, about 53 months earlier. The Skilled line was serving cases filed about 29 months earlier.

That’s roughly 24 extra months of waiting for the category that covers entry-level jobs.

The wait at the Visa Bulletin also comes on top of the Department of Labor steps. PERM labor certifications decided in August 2026 took an average of 336 days in analyst review, according to the Department of Labor’s FLAG processing times as of October 5, 2026.

What this means for a reshored plant

A company announcing a plant in 2026 that wants permanent entry-level workers through EB-3 is planning around a multi-year timeline. Under the current cap, the visa wait alone recently ran more than 48 months.

The plant opening date doesn’t wait for the Visa Bulletin.

EB3.work tracks the current timeline step by step on its weekly-updated EB-3 Processing Times page.

Why the Other Workers Cap Should Rise

EB3.work’s position is that Congress should raise the EB-3 Other Workers cap to at least 50,000 a year.

The reasoning follows from the data above.

More numbers means a shorter line

Visa waits come from demand outrunning a fixed supply of numbers. When a category can issue only 10,000 visas a year, including family members, a backlog builds every year that demand is higher.

The Skilled line, which isn’t held to that sub-limit, was about 24 months closer to current in November 2026. A larger Other Workers allocation is the most direct way to move its line forward.

The cap no longer matches the economy

The limit was written in 1990. Since then, reshoring has turned into an industrial policy goal, and manufacturing openings are running at 584,000 in a single month (BLS JOLTS).

A permanent, year-round production job is exactly what the Other Workers category was built for. It just wasn’t built at a scale that fits today’s demand.

Employers and workers both benefit

For employers, a shorter wait means a sponsored worker can start closer to when the job actually exists. That makes EB-3 usable for plant launches and expansions, not just long-range planning.

For workers, it means fewer years waiting abroad for a job offer that has already been approved.

The Dignity Act takes a different route

One proposal in Congress addresses part of the problem without changing the 10,000 number.

The Dignity Act of 2025 (H.R. 4393), introduced July 15, 2025 by Reps. María Elvira Salazar and Veronica Escobar, would stop counting spouses and children against employment-based caps (GovInfo; RN Law Group).

If about 7,000 of the 10,000 Other Workers numbers go to family members, as Dorer estimates (Construction Dive), that change alone would make far more of the category available to workers.

The other side of the argument

Not everyone agrees that more employment-based green cards are the right answer.

The Center for Immigration Studies has argued that the Dignity Act’s change to family counting would raise employment-based visa issuance from 140,000 to about 289,800 a year, and that U.S. workers would have to compete with more foreign workers as a result (CIS, July 2025).

Those concerns are part of the debate. EB-3 already includes a safeguard aimed at them: every case goes through PERM labor certification, a Department of Labor test of the local labor market, at a government-set prevailing wage, before an employer can sponsor anyone.

Why EB-3 Fits Reshored Production Jobs, and Where EB3.work Comes In

Even with today’s cap, EB-3 is one of the few tools that matches the shape of the reshoring staffing problem.

It’s permanent, like the plants

Reshored plants are long-term investments. EB-3 workers arrive as lawful permanent residents with a green card, not on a temporary visa that ends after a season.

That’s a match for year-round production work. Seasonal programs like H-2B aren’t built for it.

It fits entry-level production roles

The Other Workers category covers jobs that need less than two years of training or experience. Assemblers and fabricators need no prior work experience and learn on the job (BLS OOH).

EB-3 Other Workers is the main category EB3.work handles, which is why it focuses on entry-level, high-demand roles like these.

It adds workers instead of reshuffling them

When a new plant opens in a tight local market, raising pay mostly pulls workers from the plant down the road. EB-3 brings in workers who aren’t in the U.S. labor pool today.

What EB3.work handles

Most manufacturers don’t have an immigration team, and EB-3 runs through three federal agencies: the Department of Labor, USCIS and the State Department.

EB3.work works with immigration attorneys on every case and runs the process through a platform that tracks each worker’s progress.

The employer pays a flat fee of around $1,500 in total. That covers the PERM attorney fee and the local recruitment advertising PERM requires.

Employers interview pre-screened candidates. EB3.work’s free tools help with planning: the Employer Eligibility Calculator, Prevailing Wage Calculator, ROI Workforce Calculator and EB-3 Processing Times.

Because the fee doesn’t change with headcount, sponsoring a full production team costs the same as sponsoring one worker. That’s what lets a manufacturer build a pipeline for a new line or plant.

The tradeoffs are real

Under the current cap, EB-3 Other Workers is slow. The Visa Bulletin line alone was serving cases filed about +50 months earlier in November 2026, on top of the Department of Labor steps.

That makes it a pipeline for the next several years of production, not a fix for next quarter’s openings.

Employers also must pay at least the prevailing wage and show they can afford the offered wage. The free Employer Eligibility Calculator estimates how many workers a company can sponsor based on its tax return, headcount, position and location.

Frequently Asked Questions

What This Means for Employers

The data shows reshoring demand rising faster than hiring, and a permanent visa channel still sized by a 1990 law. Here’s what that supports.

• Staff the plant before you announce it. Announced jobs rose to 247,063 in 2025, and hires fell to 313,000 in September 2026 while openings hit 584,000.

Build the workforce plan into site selection, not after the ribbon cutting.

• Hire for trainability, not experience. Assembler and fabricator roles need no prior experience and use on-the-job training.

Widening the candidate pool to people you’ll train is faster than waiting for experienced applicants.

• Partner with local training programs. The Reshoring Initiative itself points to apprenticeships and technical training as the long-term workforce fix.

Community college and apprenticeship partnerships take time to build, so start early.

• Benchmark pay against the BLS median. Assemblers earned a median of $21.85 an hour in May 2025.

Know where your offer sits, especially in states with heavy reshoring activity like Texas, North Carolina and Georgia.

• Build a long-term international pipeline through EB-3. Entry-level production roles fit the Other Workers category, and sponsored workers arrive as permanent residents.

Specialists like EB3.work handle the process with immigration attorneys for a flat fee of around $1,500 in total. Under the current 10,000 cap, plan for a multi-year wait.

• Make the case for a bigger cap. If your plant depends on entry-level workers, the 10,000 limit affects your timeline directly.

Employers are the ones who can show lawmakers what a 1990 limit means for a 2026 plant.

Sources

• EB3.work, “Support the Dignity Act of 2025 (H.R. 4393),” updated May 24, 2026: https://eb3.work/support-the-dignity-act/
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, JOLTS Table 1 (job openings), September 2026: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t01.htm
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, JOLTS Table 2 (hires), September 2026: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t02.htm
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, JOLTS Table 4 (quits), September 2026: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t04.htm
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/assemblers-and-fabricators.htm
• 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(3), Skilled workers, professionals, and other workers: https://law.justia.com/codes/us/2019/title-8/chapter-12/subchapter-ii/part-i/sec-1153/
• U.S. Department of State, Visa Bulletin for November 2026
• U.S. Department of Labor, FLAG Processing Times (as of October 5, 2026): https://flag.dol.gov/processingtimes
• H.R. 4393, Dignity Act of 2025, introduced July 15, 2025: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119hr4393ih/html/BILLS-119hr4393ih.htm