Manufacturing Employment And Hours

Professor of Public Affairs and Economics at the University of Wisconsin • Apr 4, 2026 at 5:15 PM EDT

Manufacturing employment displays a stark divergence as BLS reports gains while ADP figures trend lower.

ADP down while BLS up. Aggregate hours down.

Figure 1: Manufacturing employment from BLS CES (blue, left log scale), from ADP (red, left log scale), in 000’s, s.a., total hours in manufacturing, production and nonsupervisory workers, in logs 2025M01=0 (teal, right scale), s.a. Source: BLS, ADP via FRED, and author’s calculations.