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Manufacturing and construction job growth outpaces services
Data center, equipment and facility investment support manufacturing employment
A worker performs maintenance on a stamping machine at the Ball Corp. beverage can manufacturing facility in Findlay, Ohio. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg)
Key Takeaways:
- U.S. goods-producer payrolls rose 0.6% in the six months through August, outpacing 0.4% services growth as manufacturing and construction hiring strengthened.
- Manufacturers added 43,000 jobs over three months, the strongest gain since late 2022, amid AI-related data center investment and federal tax incentives.
- The White House touted broad August hiring, while economists said recent manufacturing gains followed three years of steady job losses.
U.S. job growth in manufacturing, construction and other goods producers is outpacing that of the larger services economy, likely reflecting the cascade of investment dollars into the artificial intelligence buildout.
Payrolls at goods producers rose 0.6% in the six months through August, the most for any comparable period since 2023 and better than the 0.4% pickup within services, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The increase in manufacturing employment over the past three months alone, at 43,000, was the strongest since the end of 2022.
The figures help explain an August jobs report that exceeded expectations, with payrolls rising the most in five months and the jobless rate holding at 4.1%.
The recent improvement at the nation’s manufacturers, as well as in construction, has plenty to do with the massive AI push and building of data centers, according to Citigroup Inc. economist Veronica Clark. Undergirding that effort are the tax provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last year that spurred investment in equipment and facilities, she said.
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At the same time, EY-Parthenon chief economist Gregory Daco noted the recent pickup in manufacturing employment follows steady job losses over the prior three years.
The White House was quick to tout the latest jobs report, which showed August hiring was broad in both manufacturing and construction.
“If you dig down, then what you can see is that there’s a lot of policy success underneath it all,” Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, said on CNBC. “One of the most interesting things to me in the data is that, since President Trump took office, employment for people who are building factories has gone up by 90,000. So think about how many future jobs that’s going to create.”
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A measure of the breadth of hiring in 72 manufacturing industries rose in August to the highest level in nearly four years, the BLS data showed. Job growth was solid at producers of machinery, primary and fabricated metals, computers and electronic products, and electrical equipment and appliances.
