US manufacturing had about 428,000 job openings in December 2024

Vintage first. Every figure on this page is December 2024, from the release BLS published on February 4, 2025. A newer JOLTS month will read differently, and both can be right, so check the date before deciding either one is wrong. The manufacturing row's own 586, 439, 428 sequence shows how far the level moves across three months.

Openings are a month-end stock. JOLTS counts positions open on the last business day of the month, so 428,000 is a point-in-time reading rather than the number of jobs that went unfilled across 2024. Vacancies are filled and reopened constantly, and the survey only photographs one day.

Seasonally adjusted or not. The 428,000 comes from the seasonally adjusted Table A; the raw, not-adjusted series reads differently, so citing the wrong one invites a correction. Manufacturing hiring has seasonal rhythms around model years and holiday output, which is exactly why the adjusted series exists, and splicing the two produces gaps that look like mistakes.

Sector versus total. 428,000 is manufacturing alone; 7.6 million is all of nonfarm. Mix the two, or set a sector level against a national rate, and the story blurs, because the 4.5% rate belongs to the whole economy and does not describe manufacturing's own openings rate.

Revisions move the number. The 428,000 was a preliminary December value, and BLS revises JOLTS as more responses arrive, so cite it with its month and its preliminary label.

Cite it as BLS JOLTS for December 2024: about 428,000 manufacturing job openings, with 7.6 million total nonfarm openings at a 4.5% rate. Put the month in the sentence itself and say it is a last-business-day snapshot.

If you need a current figure, pull the newest monthly JOLTS release from BLS. These numbers are a December 2024 reading and have been superseded many times since.

Watch the denominator on the rate: 4.5% is the total nonfarm openings rate, not a manufacturing-specific rate, so do not attach it to the 428,000 as though it described the sector.

Quoting 428,000 as the current level of manufacturing job openings. It is December 2024, published February 4, 2025, and JOLTS has issued many releases since.

Reading 428,000 as jobs that stayed empty all year. It is vacancies open on a single day, the last business day of December.

Applying the 4.5% rate to manufacturing. That rate is the total nonfarm figure for the whole economy.

Mixing seasonally adjusted and unadjusted series. The 428,000 is seasonally adjusted, from Table A, and the raw series will not match it.

The figures trace to the BLS JOLTS news release for December 2024, published February 4, 2025. We opened that release and located the manufacturing level, the total, and the rate before publishing, so each claim rests on the primary release rather than a wire summary.

The manufacturing figure is the December 2024 preliminary value from Table A's seasonally adjusted levels in thousands, where the Manufacturing row reads 586, 439, 428 across its months and the last is December at 428 (thousand).

We took the 7.6 million total and the 4.5% rate from the release's summary and labeled the rate as the total nonfarm figure, so it is not read as sector-specific.

The page stays pinned to December 2024 on purpose. We publish figures only from a release we have opened and traced ourselves, and we have not re-traced a later JOLTS month, so this is presented as a dated snapshot with a pointer to the current release.