Denver Trendlines

Tuesday, October 27, 2026·Charts every weekday

Denver-metro manufacturing jobs, September 2026

economy
employment
Published

October 21, 2026

Manufacturing payroll employment in the Denver metro, thousands of jobs, NSA, 1990 to September 2026: from 85k to a peak of 90k in December 1997, now 62k.

Manufacturing as a percent of all Denver-metro payroll jobs, NSA, 1990 to September 2026: from 10.2% to 3.8%, with a high of 10.2% in January 1990.

Denver-metro manufacturers employed 62,500 people in September 2026, down 3.7% from a year earlier — 3.8% of all payroll jobs in the metro. The sector peaked at 90,100 jobs in December 1997 and has shed roughly 31% of that since.

The second chart is the share: it went from 10.2% in January 1990 to 3.8% now.

Numerator and denominator of the share come from the same BLS release for the same metro, so it stays consistent when the levels are revised; it is computed at read time, never stored.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, State & Area Employment, manufacturing and total nonfarm payrolls, Denver–Aurora–Centennial MSA, not seasonally adjusted, via FRED. The share is derived at read time. Auto-generated each build.