Manufacturing Business Births and Deaths Statistics 2026

What counts as a manufacturing business birth or death?

The Census Bureau's Business Dynamics Statistics tracks annual measures of business dynamism, including establishment births and deaths, firm startups and shutdowns, job creation, and job destruction. For this page, manufacturing means NAICS sector 31-33, the same sector definition used in the Census BDS sector files.

An establishment birth is a physical business location that appears in the employer universe during the last 12 months. An establishment death is a location that exits during the last 12 months. This matters for manufacturers because one firm can run multiple plants, and a closing plant can remove production capacity even when the parent company stays alive.

In 2023, Census counted 18,443 manufacturing establishment births and 18,782 manufacturing establishment exits. New manufacturing establishments created 262,904 jobs, while establishment deaths destroyed 235,498 jobs. The net result was positive, with 154,526 net manufacturing jobs created after expansions, contractions, openings, and closings were counted together.

Key manufacturing business birth and death statistics

Manufacturing is not a high-churn sector compared with restaurants, construction, transportation, or professional services. That is exactly why the data is useful. A new plant usually requires capital, permits, equipment, trained labor, and a customer base before it opens. A plant closure often means capacity, tooling, and local employment disappear at the same time.

The Census BDS file shows 220,696 manufacturing firms operating 268,269 establishments in 2023. Those establishments employed 12,293,106 workers. Manufacturing births created jobs equal to a 2.2% birth-related job creation rate, while establishment deaths destroyed jobs equal to a 1.9% death-related job destruction rate.

Compared with 1978, manufacturing has fewer locations and a smaller employee base. Census counted 312,024 manufacturing establishments in 1978 and 18.3 million manufacturing employees in 1978. By 2023, the sector had 43,755 fewer establishments and about 6.0 million fewer employees. The birth rate also cooled from 10.9% in 1978 to 6.9% in 2023.

Manufacturing births, deaths, and job churn by year

The last decade shows a steady but uneven manufacturing base. Establishment births fell to 16,617 in 2020, then climbed to 21,145 in 2022 before easing to 18,443 in 2023. Establishment exits rose during the pandemic period, reaching 20,622 in 2021, then moved back below 19,000 in 2022 and 2023.

Long-run manufacturing startup trends

The long-run story is not that factories stopped opening. It is that fewer new manufacturing locations open each year than in the 1980s, and each new opening happens inside a more capital-heavy sector. Manufacturing establishment births peaked at 36,291 in 1988. The low point was 16,460 births in 2010, after the Great Recession hit demand, credit, and factory utilization.

Manufacturing establishment exits peaked at 34,199 in 1991. The lowest exit count in the file was 18,205 in 2015. Job creation from new manufacturing establishments peaked at 721,786 jobs in 1988, while job destruction from establishment deaths reached its highest point at 806,946 jobs in 1985.

The net job creation line is volatile. Manufacturing added 1,109,313 net jobs in 1984 by the Census BDS measure. It lost 1,508,470 net jobs in 2002. The 2023 net gain of 154,526 jobs was not a boom, but it was a return to positive territory after the 101,741 net manufacturing jobs lost in 2020 and the 299,256 net manufacturing jobs lost in 2021.

States with the most new manufacturing establishments

Large industrial states still dominate the count of new manufacturing establishments. California had 2,417 manufacturing establishment births in 2023, followed by 1,705 in Texas and 1,343 in Florida. New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, and North Carolina rounded out the top ten by raw establishment births.

Fastest manufacturing startup rates by state

Raw counts favor big states. Birth rates show a different picture. Delaware had a 12.6% manufacturing establishment birth rate in 2023, followed by 11.4% in Alaska, 10.5% in Nevada, and 10.4% in Florida. Texas ranked ninth by rate at 8.7%, which is notable because it also ranked second by raw birth count.

High birth rates can mean a healthy startup market, but they can also reflect a smaller base. Delaware's rate came from 138 births, while Texas posted 1,705 births. For site selection and local sales planning, use both numbers. Rate tells you where the base is changing fast. Count tells you where the actual number of new prospects is largest.

States with the strongest net manufacturing job creation

Texas led the country with 22,566 net manufacturing jobs created in 2023. Illinois followed with 10,901 net jobs, and Tennessee added 10,028 net jobs. Connecticut, California, Florida, North Carolina, Maryland, Minnesota, and New Jersey also ranked in the top ten.

This is the table sales teams should watch. A state can have many plant openings and still struggle if closures and contractions wipe out the gains. Net job creation blends new establishments, expanding establishments, closing establishments, and contracting establishments into one pressure gauge for local industrial demand.

How manufacturing compares with other sectors

Manufacturing ranked twelfth among major sectors for establishment births in 2023 with 18,443 new establishments. Professional and technical services had 103,804 births, health care had 98,281 births, and construction had 90,679 births. That gap is expected. Opening a machine shop, food plant, fab shop, or electronics facility is usually harder than opening a service office.

Manufacturing ranked eighth for jobs lost from establishment deaths, with 235,498 jobs destroyed by deaths. Health care had 654,668 jobs lost from deaths, accommodation and food services had 638,129, and professional services had 478,417. Manufacturing's lower exit rate does not make closures painless. One closing plant can remove hundreds of jobs from a county.

What this means for manufacturing marketers and suppliers

New establishments are not just an economic statistic. They are buying signals. A new plant needs tooling, safety supplies, calibration, recruiting help, ERP setup, maintenance support, packaging, logistics, and a supplier bench. The 2023 Census data shows 18,443 new manufacturing locations entering the market. That is a large prospect universe, but it is spread unevenly across states and subsectors.

Use the birth count to prioritize territory planning. California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Illinois had the most new manufacturing establishments. Use the net job creation table to find states where industrial payrolls are still expanding after closures are counted. Texas, Illinois, Tennessee, Connecticut, and California looked strongest by that measure in 2023.

For content and outreach, this data supports a practical angle: manufacturers are still opening facilities, but the market is selective. A vendor selling to new plants should not market like every region is growing at the same speed. Build landing pages around active states, publish location-specific buyer guides, and make the first call useful. New operations are busy. They do not need fluff.

Definitions, caveats, and how to use the dataset

The BDS dataset is an annual statistical product, so it should not be treated like a live quarter-by-quarter estimate. If you need quarterly movement, the BLS Business Employment Dynamics summary is the better companion source. BLS reported that private-sector establishment births accounted for 967,000 jobs in the third quarter of 2025, which helps place the slower annual Census release beside a more current 2025 labor-market view.

Business demography terms can get messy. The Census business economy files separate a firm from an establishment, and they separate establishment births from firm births. A firm can own one facility or many facilities. A new business can be a brand-new enterprise, a new plant owned by an existing company, or a location that appears after an ownership change. That is why this resource uses establishment-level data for manufacturing.

Birth and death rates are more useful than raw counts when you compare places with very different industrial bases. A state with a small number of companies can post a high birth rate even when the total number of new facilities is modest. A state with thousands of manufacturers can post an average rate while still creating more sales opportunities for suppliers. Treat the proportion and the count as a pair.

Survival is the missing half of most business births coverage. The Census BDS program also publishes establishment age files that can be used to study deaths and survival rates over the life cycle of a plant. For this report, the core asset is the sector and state dataset, but survival, adaptation, entrepreneurship, innovation, and market conditions all affect whether a new facility becomes a lasting contribution to local employment growth.

International users often compare this page with UK business register statistics, Ireland enterprise demography releases, or an OECD business demography handbook. That comparison is useful for terminology, but the data on this page is U.S. manufacturing only. Do not mix U.S. Census BDS counts with a UK or Ireland programme unless you normalize definitions, industrial classification, ownership rules, and preliminary release timing.

One more caveat: Census BDS is built from employer records, so it focuses on paid-employment businesses. It is not a count of every side project, nonemployer workshop, or pre-revenue hardware startup. For manufacturing lead generation, that is a feature. The data is closer to the universe of plants and firms with payroll, real economic activity, gross job flows, and supplier needs.

How to interpret the state rankings

The state rankings are strongest when you read them in layers. First, look at establishment births because that gives you the plain count of new production locations. California, Texas, and Florida led by this measure in 2023. Second, check the birth rate. Delaware, Alaska, Nevada, and Florida led by rate, which means their manufacturing base changed faster than most states even if the raw number of openings was smaller.

Third, compare births with exits. A market with many openings and many closures may be churning rather than building durable capacity. California had 2,417 births and 2,853 exits in 2023. Texas had 1,705 births and 1,505 exits. Both are large manufacturing markets, but the churn profile is different.

Fourth, use net job creation to see whether openings and expansions outweighed closures and contractions. Texas added 22,566 net manufacturing jobs by the BDS measure in 2023. Illinois added 10,901, Tennessee added 10,028, and Connecticut added 7,345. A supplier deciding where to invest sales coverage should weigh those net job gains heavily.

Finally, remember that the Census data does not explain why a plant opened or closed. It measures what happened. The cause can be reshoring, local incentives, energy prices, customer proximity, freight lanes, military contracts, food processing demand, semiconductor investment, or a private owner retiring. Treat BDS as the map, then layer in local news, permitting data, and customer research before you make a market call.

How suppliers can turn this data into outreach

A new manufacturing establishment is usually in a hurry. Leaders are hiring, buying equipment, building supplier lists, setting up quality systems, training supervisors, and trying to get production stable. That creates useful reasons to reach out, but only if the message is specific. A generic pitch to every new manufacturer will feel like spam. A message tied to the actual state, subsector, and operating problem has a better chance.

For example, a calibration provider could build a state page for Texas manufacturers because the state had 1,705 establishment births and 23,148 jobs created by birth establishments in 2023. A recruiting firm could prioritize Tennessee because it ranked third in net manufacturing job creation with 10,028 net jobs. A packaging supplier could focus on California and Florida because both states had more than 1,000 manufacturing establishment births.

The same logic works for content. Instead of publishing one broad article about manufacturing growth, publish pages that answer concrete buyer questions by market: who is hiring, what subsectors are expanding, what counties have new plant announcements, and what support services a new facility typically needs in its first year. This report gives the macro data. Your local pages should connect it to the practical buying moment.

Do not ignore closing data. Establishment deaths can create replacement demand, auction activity, maintenance opportunities for surviving plants, and acquisition targets. If a state has high closures but positive net job creation, the market may be rotating toward larger, newer, or better-capitalized facilities. If closures rise while net job creation turns negative, outreach should shift from expansion services toward cost control, retention, repair, and productivity.

Data dictionary for this report

The glossary below is included because manufacturing business demography can look simple until you try to use it in a board deck, a market sizing model, or a territory plan. A plant manager, an economic developer, and a sales leader may all say "startup" and mean different things. Census terms are more precise. They are also better for comparing one state with another because the same definitions are used across the file.

Firms are business organizations. Census counted 220,696 manufacturing firms in 2023. Establishments are physical business locations. Census counted 268,269 manufacturing establishments in 2023. A multi-plant manufacturer can be one firm and several establishments.

Employment is the number of employees attached to the establishments in the BDS file. Manufacturing employment was 12,293,106 in the 2023 BDS sector file. This annual employer-record measure will not always match a monthly payroll series exactly, so readers who need current payroll context should also check FRED's manufacturing employment series.

Establishment births are locations born during the last 12 months. Manufacturing had 18,443 births in 2023. Establishment exits are locations that exited during the last 12 months. Manufacturing had 18,782 exits in 2023. Job creation from births counts jobs created by opening establishments, while job destruction from deaths counts jobs lost from closing establishments.

Net job creation is job creation minus job destruction across openings, closings, expansions, and contractions. Manufacturing's 2023 net job creation was 154,526. That is why a sector can have more establishment exits than births and still add net jobs, expansions at surviving plants can more than offset the difference.

2019 to 2023: what changed after the pandemic shock?

The 2019 baseline is useful because it shows the sector before the pandemic distortion. In 2019, Census counted 17,092 manufacturing establishment births, 18,772 establishment exits, 222,251 jobs created by births, and 237,647 jobs lost from deaths. Net manufacturing job creation was still positive at 208,020 jobs.

By 2020, manufacturing business deaths and contractions overwhelmed openings and expansions. Census reported 16,617 manufacturing establishment births, 20,231 exits, and 101,741 net jobs lost. In 2021, establishment births rose to 18,384, but exits also rose to 20,622, and net job creation stayed negative at 299,256 jobs lost.

The rebound appeared in 2022. Manufacturing establishment births increased to 21,145, exits fell to 18,955, and net job creation moved back to 423,072 jobs gained. Business births decreased in 2023 from the 2022 peak, but the sector still posted 154,526 net jobs created. That makes 2023 look less like a breakout year and more like a normalization year after the supply shock.

Small business readers should be careful with this comparison. A small machine shop and a large multi-site manufacturer both show up in the employer data, but their financing, hiring, customer concentration, and survival odds are very different. The year of birth matters too. A plant born in 2020 faced a different first 5 years than one born in 2023 because interest rates, labor availability, inventory policy, and reshoring budgets changed quickly.

For market sizing, use Census as the base and treat later-year estimation separately. If you're building statistics on business openings for a 2024 or 2025 forecast, start with the BDS baseline, then layer in BLS quarterly BED data, state economic development announcements, permits, and local industrial real estate absorption. That keeps the historical count clean while still giving you a current operating view.

Total employment is also part of the story. The BDS file shows 12,052,403 manufacturing employees in 2019 and 12,293,106 in 2023. That is a gain of 240,703 employees across the period, even though the sector went through two negative net job creation years. The factory base got hit, adjusted, and kept adding payroll by the latest annual Census count.

FAQ

Are business births the same as manufacturing startups?

No. Business births can include new establishments owned by existing firms. A startup is usually a new firm, while an establishment birth is a new operating location. For manufacturing, establishment births are often more useful because suppliers sell to plants, not just legal entities.

Why do deaths matter if net job creation is positive?

Deaths tell you where capacity is leaving the market. In 2023, manufacturing still created 154,526 net jobs, but establishment deaths removed 235,498 jobs. Both numbers matter if you sell equipment, recruiting, logistics, or industrial services.

Can this be used as a 2024 or 2025 estimate?

No. The BDS release used here runs through 2023. Use it as the latest annual Census baseline, then pair it with BLS quarterly employment dynamics, FRED manufacturing employment, and state-level announcements for 2024 and 2025 updates.

Methodology

This resource uses the Census Bureau's 2023 Business Dynamics Statistics time-series files. National manufacturing data comes from the sector CSV. State manufacturing data comes from the state by sector CSV. Manufacturing is NAICS 31-33. Counts are employer establishments, not nonemployer side businesses.

Percentages shown as birth rates, death rates, job creation rates, and job destruction rates are reported by Census in the BDS files. Recent employment context can also be checked against FRED's manufacturing payroll employment series, which tracks the monthly Current Employment Statistics manufacturing employment measure. Quarterly private-sector birth and death context is available from the BLS Business Employment Dynamics summary.

Cite this page

Suggested citation: Manufacturing Lead Generation. "Manufacturing Business Births and Deaths Statistics 2026." Last updated July 8, 2026. https://manufacturingleadgeneration.com/manufacturing-business-births-deaths-statistics/

Sources

• Census Bureau Business Dynamics Statistics homepage
• Census Bureau BDS data tables
• Census Bureau BDS API documentation and variable definitions
• Census BDS 2023 sector CSV
• Census BDS 2023 state by sector CSV
• BLS Business Employment Dynamics summary
• BLS Business Employment Dynamics by major industry
• FRED manufacturing payroll employment series