Key Facts

• US manufacturing employment rose by 19,000 in October 2026 and is up 101,000 since a recent low in December 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
• Production and nonsupervisory jobs, the factory-floor workforce, fell from 8,791,000 in October 2025 to 8,757,000 in October 2026, a drop of 34,000 (BLS Table B-6).
• Production workers averaged 41.8 hours a week in October 2026, including 4.1 hours of overtime, up from 41.1 and 3.7 hours a year earlier (BLS Table B-7).
• Manufacturing job openings reached 584,000 in September 2026, up from 389,000 a year earlier, while hires rose only from 300,000 to 313,000 (BLS JOLTS Tables 1 and 2).
• The manufacturing quits rate rose from 1.4% to 1.6% over the same year, while the layoff rate fell from 0.9% to 0.8% (BLS JOLTS Tables 4 and 5).

The headline numbers say US manufacturing jobs are growing again. After two years of losses, factories have added jobs in most months of 2026.

Look one layer down, and the picture changes. The jobs on the production floor didn’t grow. They shrank.

At the same time, openings climbed, hiring barely moved, more workers quit, and the people still on the line are working longer weeks than in any month from 2021 through 2025.

Put together, the federal data points to a labor shortage concentrated on the factory floor, and a turnover problem that’s getting worse in parts of the industry.

This article walks through the latest BLS data on manufacturing employment, hours, openings, hires, quits and pay, and what it means for employers trying to staff production lines.

All 2026 figures below are preliminary. BLS revises them monthly and will benchmark them again in early 2027.

US Manufacturing Jobs Are Growing Again, on Paper

Manufacturing payrolls bottomed out at 12,580,000 jobs in December 2025, according to BLS data via FRED.

That low followed a long slide. In January 2024, manufacturers employed 12,875,000 people. By December 2025, the industry had lost 295,000 jobs (same source).

Then the trend turned. By October 2026, manufacturing employment had reached 12,681,000 (BLS Table B-1).

BLS put it plainly in its November 6 release: “Manufacturing employment continued to trend up in October (+19,000)” and “has increased by 101,000 since a recent low in December 2025” (BLS Employment Situation).

Purchasing managers report the same direction. The Institute for Supply Management’s Employment Index was 52.4% in October 2026, where any reading above 50% signals growth, and panelists’ comments about hiring outnumbered comments about reducing headcount 1.8 to 1 (ISM October 2026 Manufacturing PMI Report)

The recovery hasn’t erased the earlier losses. October 2026 is 222,000 jobs below the post-pandemic peak of 12,903,000 in January 2023, and 62,000 below February 2020.

Table 1: US manufacturing employment, selected months

Month	All manufacturing employees	Note
February 2020	12,743,000	Before the pandemic
January 2023	12,903,000	Post-pandemic peak
January 2024	12,875,000
October 2025	12,603,000
December 2025	12,580,000	Recent low
August 2026	12,649,000
September 2026	12,662,000	Preliminary
October 2026	12,681,000	Preliminary

The Production Floor Didn’t Share in the Gains

The total above counts everyone on a manufacturer’s payroll: machine operators, assemblers, managers, engineers, accountants and salespeople.

BLS also publishes a narrower count, production and nonsupervisory employees.

Who counts as a production worker

BLS defines production and related employees as “working supervisors and all nonsupervisory employees (including group leaders and trainees)” engaged in work such as “fabricating, processing, assembling, inspecting, receiving, storing, handling, packing, warehousing, shipping,” as well as maintenance, repair, janitorial and guard services tied to production (BLS series notes via FRED).

In practice, these are the hourly people who run the plant. Managers and most office staff are outside this group.

The count went down, not up

Production and nonsupervisory employment in manufacturing was 8,791,000 in October 2025. In October 2026, it was 8,757,000.

That’s 34,000 fewer production jobs during a year when total manufacturing employment rose by 78,000.

Since the December 2025 low, total manufacturing employment is up 101,000. Production employment, which stood at 8,777,000 in December, is down 20,000 over the same stretch.

BLS doesn’t publish a separate count of managers or office staff. What the two series show together is that 2026’s job growth in manufacturing didn’t reach the production floor.

Table 2: All manufacturing jobs vs. production jobs

Month	All employees	Production and nonsupervisory employees
February 2020	12,743,000	8,884,000
February 2023	12,898,000	9,081,000 (peak)
October 2025	12,603,000	8,791,000
December 2025	12,580,000	8,777,000
October 2026	12,681,000	8,757,000

Production employment is now 324,000 below its February 2023 peak and 127,000 below February 2020. The floor workforce has fallen further than the industry as a whole.

Manufacturing is also out of step with the rest of the economy. Production and nonsupervisory employment across all private industries rose from 109,849,000 to 110,894,000 over the same twelve months.

The wider labor market looks more balanced. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Worker Shortage Index puts the national average at 1.0, or 100 available workers for every 100 openings, and says “nationally the gap has largely closed” (U.S. Chamber of Commerce).

Against that backdrop, a shrinking production floor with rising openings points to a problem specific to manufacturing.

Openings Are Climbing Faster Than Hiring

Fewer production workers could, in theory, mean manufacturers simply need fewer of them. The openings data, which we tracked through August, says otherwise.

Manufacturers had 584,000 job openings at the end of September 2026, an openings rate of 4.4%. A year earlier, they had 389,000, a rate of 3.0%.

Hiring didn’t follow. Manufacturers made 313,000 hires in September 2026, compared with 300,000 in September 2025.

So over twelve months, openings rose by 195,000 while monthly hires rose by 13,000.

The gap is widest in durable goods

Durable goods manufacturers, the plants that make vehicles, machinery, metal products and electronics, had 403,000 openings in September 2026, up from 248,000 a year earlier. Their openings rate reached 4.9% (same source).

Their hires were essentially flat: 174,000 in September 2026, compared with 172,000 a year earlier.

Nondurable goods openings rose too, from 141,000 to 180,000, while hires rose from 128,000 to 139,000 (same sources).

Table 3: Manufacturing openings and hires, September 2025 vs. September 2026

Measure	Sept. 2025	Sept. 2026 (preliminary)
Openings, all manufacturing	389,000 (3.0%)	584,000 (4.4%)
Openings, durable goods	248,000 (3.1%)	403,000 (4.9%)
Openings, nondurable goods	141,000 (2.9%)	180,000 (3.7%)
Hires, all manufacturing	300,000 (2.4%)	313,000 (2.5%)
Hires, durable goods	172,000 (2.2%)	174,000 (2.2%)
Hires, nondurable goods	128,000 (2.7%)	139,000 (2.9%)

What openings do and don’t prove

A job opening isn’t the same as a job that can’t be filled. BLS counts a position as open if it exists, could start within 30 days, and the employer is “actively recruiting workers from outside the establishment to fill the position” (BLS JOLTS Technical Note).

But when openings rise by half, hires stay flat and the production workforce shrinks, all in the same year, the simplest reading is that employers want more floor workers than they’re able to hire.

Plants Are Filling the Gap With Overtime

If production headcount is falling while openings pile up, the work has to come from somewhere. The hours data shows where.

Production workers in manufacturing averaged 41.8 hours a week in October 2026, up from 41.1 a year earlier.

Overtime rose from 3.7 hours a week to 4.1 hours (same source).

From January 2021 through December 2025, the average production workweek never reached 41.8 hours; its highest point was 41.6 (FRED AWHMAN).

Overtime last reached 4.1 hours in April 2022, then fell as low as 3.5 hours in late 2023. It has been at 4.0 hours or higher every month since April 2026.

Table 4: Production worker hours, October 2025 vs. October 2026

Measure	Oct. 2025	Oct. 2026 (preliminary)
Average weekly hours, all manufacturing	41.1	41.8
Average weekly hours, durable goods	41.4	42.4
Average weekly hours, nondurable goods	40.7	40.9
Average weekly overtime, all manufacturing	3.7	4.1
Average weekly overtime, durable goods	3.7	4.2
Average weekly overtime, nondurable goods	3.8	3.9

The longest weeks are in durable goods, the same segment with the biggest jump in openings. Production workers there averaged 42.4 hours in October, a full hour more than a year earlier, with 4.2 hours of overtime (same source).

Overtime is a shortage signal

A spike in overtime for a month or two can mean a rush order. Overtime that stays elevated for most of a year usually means something else: open positions being covered by the existing crew.

That approach has limits. The same people can only absorb so many extra shifts before attendance, safety and retention start to slip. Which leads to the turnover data.

Turnover: More Manufacturing Workers Are Choosing to Leave

Manufacturing has long had lower turnover than most industries. That’s still true, but the direction has changed.

The manufacturing quits rate, the share of workers who leave voluntarily in a month, rose from 1.4% in September 2025 to 1.6% in September 2026. That’s 199,000 quits in a single month.

Layoffs moved the other way. The manufacturing layoff and discharge rate fell from 0.9% to 0.8%, or 99,000 in September 202 (BLS JOLTS Table 5).

Total separations, everyone who left a manufacturing payroll for any reason, were 318,000 in September 2026, a rate of 2.5% (BLS JOLTS Table 3).

In other words, more of the people leaving manufacturing jobs are choosing to go, and fewer are being let go.

Nondurable goods have a churn problem

The turnover rise is sharpest in nondurable goods, which include food, beverages, plastics, paper and chemicals.

Their quits rate rose from 1.6% to 1.9% over the year, and their total separations rate reached 3.0% in September 2026 (BLS JOLTS Tables 3 and 4).

In durable goods, the quits rate moved from 1.3% to 1.4%, and total separations were 2.2% (same sources).

Table 5: Manufacturing turnover, September 2025 vs. September 2026

Measure (rate, % of employment)	Sept. 2025	Sept. 2026 (preliminary)
Quits, all manufacturing	1.4%	1.6%
Quits, durable goods	1.3%	1.4%
Quits, nondurable goods	1.6%	1.9%
Quits, all private industries	2.0%	2.3%
Layoffs and discharges, all manufacturing	0.9%	0.8%
Total separations, all manufacturing	2.4%	2.5%
Total separations, nondurable goods	2.6%	3.0%

Manufacturing’s quits rate is still below the 2.3% rate for all private industries (same source). But every quit on a production line is a position that has to be refilled, and in 2026 refilling has gotten harder.

Two Kinds of Shortage: Durable and Nondurable Goods

“Manufacturing” covers very different businesses, and 2026 has split them in two.

Durable goods employment rose from 7,805,000 to 7,928,000 over the year to October, a gain of 123,000 jobs. Nondurable goods employment fell from 4,798,000 to 4,753,000, a loss of 45,000.

Production jobs followed the same pattern. Durable goods added 40,000 production and nonsupervisory jobs, while nondurable goods lost 74,000.

Table 6: Manufacturing employment by industry, October 2025 vs. October 2026

Industry	Oct. 2025	Oct. 2026 (preliminary)	Change
Transportation equipment	1,731,000	1,769,500	+38,500
Fabricated metal products	1,438,700	1,468,600	+29,900
Machinery	1,084,600	1,104,000	+19,400
Electrical equipment and appliances	429,800	448,400	+18,600
Computer and electronic products	990,700	1,008,300	+17,600
Primary metals	362,600	373,600	+11,000
Chemicals	903,600	906,900	+3,300
Paper	356,600	352,900	−3,700
Printing	339,600	335,800	−3,800
Wood products	399,800	393,900	−5,900
Plastics and rubber	701,800	695,400	−6,400
Apparel	78,100	71,200	−6,900
Furniture	337,800	329,500	−8,300
Beverage, tobacco and leather	349,700	339,900	−9,800
Food	1,785,000	1,771,000	−14,000

Durable goods: a growth shortage

Durable goods plants are expanding. Output rose 3.8% in the third quarter of 2026 compared with a year earlier.

Their openings jumped from 248,000 to 403,000, hires stayed flat, and production workers there now average 42.4 hours a week. That’s what a shortage looks like when demand is growing: more work than the current crew can cover, and not enough new hires to close the gap.

Nondurable goods: rising turnover pressure

Nondurable goods plants are not expanding. Output fell 1.4% over the same period, and employment is down (same source).

Yet their openings still rose from 141,000 to 180,000, and their quits rate climbed to 1.9% (BLS JOLTS Tables 1 and 4).

A food or plastics plant can be shrinking overall and still struggle to keep its lines staffed, because workers keep leaving and each one has to be replaced. That’s a weaker shortage signal than in durable goods, but it’s a real cost.

Pay Is Rising, Mostly Through Hours

Production workers in manufacturing earned an average of $30.43 an hour in October 2026, up from $29.33 a year earlier, an increase of 3.75% (BLS Table B-8).

Hourly pay climbed through the first half of the year, from $29.61 in January to $30.31 in June, then mostly leveled off (FRED).

Weekly pay rose faster. Average weekly earnings went from $1,205.46 to $1,271.97, an increase of 5.5%.

The difference is the extra hours. Workers took home more each week mainly because they worked longer weeks.

For employers, that’s an important distinction. A payroll budget that grows through overtime is buying more hours from the same people, not adding capacity.

The Floor Jobs Are Entry-Level

The production roles at the center of this shortage are mostly jobs that people can start without prior experience.

Assemblers and fabricators held 1,799,500 jobs in 2025. BLS lists the typical entry requirement as a high school diploma, with no related work experience and moderate-term on-the-job training. The median wage was $21.85 an hour in May 2025 (BLS OOH).

BLS projects about 177,500 openings a year for assemblers and fabricators through 2035, mostly to replace workers who leave, even though total employment is expected to grow just 1% (same source).

Metal and plastic machine workers held 963,000 jobs in 2025, with the same typical entry requirements and a median wage of $22.94 an hour in May 2025 (BLS OOH).

BLS projects that occupation to shrink 7% by 2035, yet still expects about 78,100 openings a year, all from replacing workers who leave (same source).

That’s the turnover problem in long-range form. Even in a flat or shrinking occupation, every departure leaves a shift that needs a person.

Looking further out, the Manufacturing Institute, citing its research with Deloitte, projects that manufacturing could face “1.9 million unfilled manufacturing positions by 2033” (Manufacturing Institute, Feb. 25, 2026). That’s a projection, not a count, but it points the same way.

Why The EB-3 Visa Fits Permanent Production Roles

Overtime that has lasted most of a year, and openings that keep reopening as workers quit, point to staffing needs that aren’t temporary. That matters for one of the hiring tools available to manufacturers: the EB-3 visa.

What The EB-3 Visa is built for

The EB-3 visa is an employment-based green card. Its “Other Workers” category covers workers capable of “performing unskilled labor, not of a temporary or seasonal nature” (8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(3)).

That description fits many production roles. Assembly, machine operation and material handling are year-round, full-time jobs with on-the-job training.

Because an EB-3 visa leads to permanent residence, the worker is hired for a permanent position the employer expects to keep filled. That’s a different proposition from a temporary visa or a staffing agency rotation.

The tradeoffs are real

The EB-3 Visa Other Workers category is capped at “not more than 10,000” visas a year, for every industry combined. Spouses and children count against that limit, which dates from a 1990 law (Congressional Research Service).

The cap creates a line. In the November 2026 Visa Bulletin, the final action date for the EB-3 Other Workers was June 1, 2022, for most countries. For EB-3 Skilled Workers, it was June 15, 2024.

The PERM labor certification step adds time before a case reaches that line. The Department of Labor’s PERM analyst review averaged 300 days for decisions issued over the 30 days before October 31, 2026 (DOL FLAG).

That means an EB-3 visa isn’t a fix for next quarter’s overtime. It’s a way to plan for production positions you know you’ll still need to fill in two or three years and beyond. We make the case for raising the cap in our reshoring analysis.

What EB3.work does

EB-3 Other Workers is the category EB3.work handles.

EB3.work works with immigration attorneys on every case. We provide pre-screened candidates and a platform that tracks each case’s progress.

Employers can also check their situation with EB3.work’s free tools:

• Employer Eligibility Calculator
• Prevailing Wage Calculator
• ROI Workforce Calculator
• EB-3 Processing Times

More on how the process works for production roles is on the Assembly and Manufacturing page.

Frequently Asked Questions

What This Means for Employers

• Measure your overtime against the national benchmark. Production workers averaged 4.1 hours of overtime a week in October 2026, and 4.2 in durable goods.

If your plant runs well above that for months at a time, you likely have a staffing gap, not a scheduling blip.

• Track quits, not just headcount. The manufacturing quits rate rose from 1.4% to 1.6% in a year, and to 1.9% in nondurable goods.

Calculate your own monthly quits rate the way BLS does, by role and shift, so you can see where workers are leaving.

• Plan production hiring separately from total headcount. Manufacturing added jobs over the past year while production jobs fell.

Check whether your own growth is reaching the floor, and budget for floor roles on their own line.

• Match your strategy to your segment. Durable goods plants face a growth shortage: openings up from 248,000 to 403,000 with flat hiring.

Nondurable plants face rising turnover: shrinking employment but more workers quitting.

• Build a longer-range pipeline for permanent roles. Local recruiting, training partnerships, temp-to-hire arrangements, retention improvements and EB-3 visa sponsorship each solve a different time horizon.

The EB-3 visa suits permanent, year-round production roles, but with a 10,000-visa annual cap and a final action date of June 2022, it’s an option for positions you’ll need filled in the years ahead, not next month.

Sources

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Employment Situation, October 2026.
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, September 2026: Table 1 (openings), Table 2 (hires), Table 3 (total separations), Table 4 (quits), Table 5 (layoffs and discharges).
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, JOLTS Technical Note.
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook
• Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, 8 U.S.C. 1153, allocation of immigrant visas.
• U.S. Department of State, Visa Bulletin for November 2026
• ISM, October 2026 Manufacturing PMI Report
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce, America Works: Workforce By the Numbers
• Manufacturing Institute, 2026 State of the U.S. Manufacturing Workforce Address, Feb. 25, 2026