Market Data

Factory Openings Then and Now: How 529,000 Stacks Up Against the Pandemic Peak and the Pre-2020 Norm

A ranked look at the openings series across eras, the 2022 record spike, the pre-pandemic baseline, and today's 529,000, to show where the current market really sits.

At 529,000 unfilled positions as of May 2026, manufacturing job openings sit 47% below the roughly one million record set in 2022 and about 32% above the pre-pandemic 2019 baseline of around 400,000, and the series is currently climbing, up about 31.9% from a year ago, per the BLS JOLTS data on FRED. Whether today's labor demand reads as 'high' depends entirely on which of those eras you use as the ruler.

The 2022 spike, in context

The 2022 record was an anomaly stacked on an anomaly. Reopening demand for goods collided with a workforce thinned by early retirements and pandemic churn, and factory openings roughly doubled from their pre-2020 norm to about one million, a level the survey had never approached since it began in 2000. That peak has become the reflexive benchmark in labor-shortage commentary, which is precisely why it misleads: measuring today's market against the most distorted quarter in the series' history makes any normal reading look slack. The 2009 trough of roughly 100,000 marks the opposite extreme, a factory sector that had stopped hiring almost entirely.

Where today's reading sits

Within the archived window, the series has run from 389,000 in Sep 2025 to 529,000 in May 2026, and the latest print sits 100% of the way up that range, up about 31.9% from a year ago (+31.9% year over year). Against the longer eras the arithmetic is straightforward: today's 529,000 is 47% below the 2022 record and 32% above the roughly 400,000 that passed for normal in 2019. In plain terms, the market is nowhere near the frenzy of 2022, but by any pre-pandemic standard, factory labor demand remains structurally elevated, and the trend is climbing.

Manufacturing job openings, May 2026: 529,000. Archived readings run from 389,000 in Sep 2025 to 529,000 in May 2026.

Every era's 'labor shortage' looks different in the data. The ranked table doesn't argue, it just shows which ruler you're using.

What the comparison means for planners

For workforce strategists the practical takeaway is that the pre-2020 baseline, not the 2022 peak, is the sane planning anchor. A market running 32% above that baseline implies recruiting pipelines, wage benchmarks, and retention budgets should still be sized for a seller's market in skilled labor, every departure is expensive to replace when hundreds of thousands of other requisitions are chasing the same trades. The record spike is the outlier to remember, not the standard to plan against.

Put a dollar figure on losing and replacing a skilled worker with the turnover cost calculator. Price a departure into this market

Published 2026-07-13.