Manufacturing Employment by State: 2026 Jobs, Plants, Pay and Payroll

How to Read This Manufacturing Employment Data

QCEW is one of the best public sources for state manufacturing employment because it is built from unemployment insurance records instead of a small survey sample. BLS says QCEW publishes a quarterly count of employment and wages reported by employers covering more than 95% of U.S. jobs. For this page, each state row pulls private ownership, manufacturing industry code 31-33, and the 2024 annual average quarter from the BLS API.

Annual average employment is the average number of covered workers across the year. Establishments are physical worksites, not companies. A contract manufacturer with three plants can count as three establishments. Average annual pay is total annual wages divided by annual average employment. Location quotient compares the state manufacturing employment share with the national manufacturing employment share. A 1.00 means the state looks like the national mix. A 2.00 means manufacturing is twice as concentrated in that state as it is nationally.

That is why a small state can be strategically important even if it does not rank near the top by total employment. Indiana's 523,146 manufacturing jobs are fewer than California's 1,247,594 jobs, but Indiana's 2.00 location quotient shows a much deeper manufacturing labor market relative to the size of the state economy. For territory planning, supplier scouting, site selection, and account-based marketing, both views are useful.

Manufacturing Employment by State Table

The table is ranked by annual average manufacturing employment. Every row links to the original BLS QCEW state API file used for the calculation. The employment change column compares 2024 annual average manufacturing jobs with 2023 in the same state and ownership category.

Top States for Manufacturing Jobs

The top ten states account for a large share of the U.S. manufacturing workforce. They are also different markets. California has a huge spread of food processing, aerospace, electronics, medical device, and fabricated metal firms. Texas combines chemicals, energy equipment, aerospace, electronics, and a fast-growing logistics base. Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Illinois remain the dense industrial belt where automotive, machinery, metals, plastics, and components overlap.

For manufacturers selling equipment, materials, controls, tooling, packaging, logistics, or industrial services, these states deserve more than generic national campaigns. A buyer in Michigan may care about automotive capacity, line shutdown risk, and Tier 1 supplier timing. A buyer in California may be dealing with compliance, port delays, energy costs, labor availability, and medical device quality systems. Good industrial marketing mirrors those local pressures instead of treating every plant like the same account.

States Where Manufacturing Is Most Concentrated

A high employment count shows scale. A high location quotient shows concentration. BLS explains that a location quotient above 1.00 means an industry has a larger share of local employment than it has nationally. In practical terms, high-LQ states tend to have deeper pools of experienced operators, maintenance techs, production supervisors, toolmakers, quality managers, and industrial suppliers.

Location quotient is useful for site selection and sales coverage. If your company sells CNC service contracts or plant maintenance software, a high-LQ state can support dense routing and better field coverage. If your company is recruiting, the same concentration can cut both ways. A strong labor pool is helpful, but every neighboring plant is also competing for the same maintenance mechanics, CNC machinists, welders, and production leads.

States Adding Manufacturing Jobs

State manufacturing growth was uneven in 2024. Some states gained factory jobs while large legacy states lost employment. The gains were not all in one region. Texas and Florida added jobs, but so did Utah, New Hampshire, and Nevada. For companies chasing new plant launches, expansion projects, and supplier reshoring, the growth list is often more useful than the size list.

Treat one-year growth as a signal, not a site-selection decision by itself. A new semiconductor fab, battery plant, food facility, or defense supplier expansion can move one state's number quickly. Before making a major bet, compare the QCEW trend with announcements, construction spending, utility availability, permitting friction, and the local supplier base.

Highest-Paying States for Manufacturing Workers

Average annual pay is affected by skill mix, overtime, union presence, subsector composition, and cost of living. A state with aerospace, pharmaceuticals, semiconductor manufacturing, petroleum, and advanced electronics will usually show higher average pay than a state with a heavier mix of lower-wage assembly or food processing. The figure below is average annual pay for all covered private manufacturing workers, not just production occupations.

Pay data matters for sales and recruiting. A high-pay manufacturing state often has plants with larger capital budgets, more technical buying committees, and stronger demand for specialized suppliers. It can also mean sales cycles are more engineering-heavy. A low-pay state may still be an excellent market for consumables, packaging, maintenance parts, staffing, training, safety, and productivity services.

Manufacturing Sector Context for 2025 and 2026 Planning

This state file is an employment dataset, not a GDP, revenue, or per capita output table. For GDP comparisons, use the BEA GDP by state tables. For monthly manufacturing sector employment and total nonfarm context, use the BLS Current Employment Statistics program. CES is the better source when you need a seasonally adjusted monthly labor market series.

QCEW is better when you need state-level manufacturing industries data by covered establishment. It works well for industry employment mapping, sector employment comparisons, and account list planning because it includes plants and worksites that are easy to tie back to local markets. It does not tell you which state for manufacturing is best by itself. A good site decision also weighs utility rates, permits, freight lanes, supplier density, workforce training, taxes, and customer proximity.

US manufacturing has changed shape over time. Manufacturing employment peaked in the late 1970s nationally, then saw a long decline before stabilizing around a smaller but more capital-intensive base. That history matters when reading the 2024 state table. A state can lose headcount and still increase output if automation, product mix, or high-value sectors like aerospace, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, machinery, or food manufacturing shift the economics. For total U.S. trend charts, compare this state table with FRED's MANEMP manufacturing employment series.

The NAICS classification used here groups durable and nondurable manufacturing into one total manufacturing category. If you need a manufacturing subsector benchmark, start with QCEW industry codes under 31, 32, and 33, then compare those files with the Census Bureau County Business Patterns program. QCEW publishes counts of employment and wages, while CBP is often used to cross-check establishment counts by industry and geography.

Several states saw manufacturing employment increased on a year-over-year basis in this file, led by Texas. In plain terms, employment rose in growth states while other states followed a downward trend. California ranked first in the nation for manufacturing employment, but its job count moved lower from the prior year. For a longer data series, compare 2024 with 2022, 2023, and later releases when BLS publishes them.

An analyst should also separate transportation equipment, food, chemicals, machinery, fabricated metals, and other subsectors before tying employment to economic growth. The percent of total employment tied to manufacturing can matter more than the raw job count in smaller states, especially where a labor shortage can hold back expansion. Historical files can go far earlier than the available data used on this page, including wartime years such as 1943 in long national series, so keep time periods consistent when you compare state figures.

This report does not include labor force participation, the unemployment rate, or population estimates. Those belong in labor market and demographic datasets, not the QCEW table used here. It also does not measure supply chain risk, pandemic recovery, new technology adoption, or increased output at the plant level. If you need a national level comparison, use the state table as the local layer and pair it with BLS CES, BEA GDP, Census Bureau CBP, and subsector sources for machinery, transportation equipment, printing and publishing, chemicals, and food processing. Wisconsin ranks high by both employment count and concentration, which is exactly why one metric alone can miss the real industrial picture.

What This Means for Manufacturing Lead Generation

State employment data helps turn a national industrial campaign into a practical territory plan. If you sell to manufacturers, the question is not only where factories exist. It is where your best-fit factories exist, how dense the market is, what they make, and whether local pressure points match your offer.

A machine guarding company can use high-employment states to prioritize safety content and dealer coverage. A contract machining shop can use manufacturing concentration to identify nearby OEM clusters. A software provider selling maintenance, ERP, MES, or quality systems can combine state QCEW data with NAICS-level targeting to build account lists that reflect real plant density instead of broad business directories.

The biggest mistake is stopping at the state rank. California, Texas, Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois all have large manufacturing workforces, but the buyer problems vary. Automotive suppliers think about PPAP, delivery windows, tooling changes, and warranty exposure. Food manufacturers think about sanitation, allergens, cold chain, line changeovers, and traceability. Medical device companies think about ISO 13485, FDA documentation, validation, and supplier risk. A state table points you to the market. Your messaging still has to fit the plant.

For SEO, this data is also useful because journalists, economic development teams, trade associations, recruiters, consultants, and B2B marketers frequently need current state manufacturing rankings. A page that cites original BLS files and explains the numbers clearly can earn links from reports, presentations, city pages, chamber articles, and industry roundups.

Methodology

We downloaded state-level annual files from the BLS QCEW API for 2024. For each state and the District of Columbia, we filtered to private ownership code 5, manufacturing industry code 31-33, and annual average quarter A. We then ranked states by annual average employment and included establishments, total wages, average weekly wage, average annual pay, employment location quotient, employment year-over-year change, and average annual pay year-over-year percent change.

BLS may revise QCEW files. If BLS updates the source file, the official BLS page should be treated as the controlling record. District of Columbia is included because BLS publishes the area file, but it is not comparable to industrial states with large plant bases. National totals in the highlight boxes are the sum of state rows used in this table, so they may differ slightly from a separately published national QCEW file because of rounding, disclosure rules, timing, or area aggregation.

Cite This Manufacturing Employment Resource

Sources

The state table links each state to the exact BLS QCEW API file used for that row. These references explain the dataset and definitions.