• Manufacturing employment rose 19,000 in January, starting the new year by continuing the solid growth seen in the past two years. In 2022, the sector hired 396,000 workers, the most of any year since 1994. Currently, the manufacturing sector has 12,999,000 employees, the most since November 2008.
  • The average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers in manufacturing rose 0.8% from $25.64 in December to $25.84 in January, up 5.3% from one year ago, continuing to be a highly elevated pace despite some easing from earlier in the year.
  • Nonfarm payroll employment jumped 517,000 in January, the strongest monthly job growth since July. In addition, the unemployment rate edged down to 3.4% in January, the lowest rate since May 1969 and continuing to reflect “full employment” in the U.S. economy.
  • There were 764,000 manufacturing job openings in December, averaging just more than 840,000 over the past 12 months. There continued to be more job openings than people actively looking for work. For every 100 job openings in the U.S. economy, there were just 52.0 unemployed Americans.
  • At the same time, there are signs that manufacturing activity has slowed considerably. The ISM® Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index® dropped to 47.4 in January, a post-pandemic low and contracting for the third straight month. New orders fell sharply at the start of the year amid uncertainties in the global economic outlook and lingering challenges.
  • The ISM® data continued to reflect progress on supply chain challenges, with supplier deliveries rising in the past two months at rates not seen since March 2009. There were similar trends in the regional surveys in January, including the most recent from the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, which reported declining activity for the ninth straight month.
  • After falling 1.9% in the prior release, new orders for manufactured goods rose 1.8% in December, buoyed by sizable increases from defense and nondefense aircraft and parts. New factory orders excluding transportation fell 1.2% for the month, with core capital goods orders edging down 0.1%.
  • These data are consistent with a manufacturing sector that weakened in the final months of the year. New factory orders soared 8.9% in the first six months of 2022 but edged down 0.3% in the second half of the year. Excluding transportation equipment, new factory orders rose 7.3% in the first half of 2022 but fell 3.5% in the second half.