Good news! U.S. manufacturers employed 12,922,000 people in October, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). That’s 4 percent more than in October 2021 and 13 percent more than in April 2020, the manufacturing employment low point of the COVID recession. The U.S. has now regained all the manufacturing jobs lost during the pandemic shutdowns and added an extra 137,000 jobs to boot. In fact, October’s manufacturing employment total is the highest since November 2008.
Better still, there’s room to improve! According to the BLS, there were 810,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs in the U.S. in September. With the unemployment rate at 3.7 percent—the record low is 3.5 percent—manufacturers face stiff competition to attract workers.