U.S. goods-producing industries outpaced services in employment growth during the six months through August 2025, rising 0.6% compared with 0.4% for services, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Manufacturing added 43,000 jobs over the past three months, while total nonfarm payrolls (jobs excluding farm employment) rose 162,000 in August, well above the roughly 56,000 consensus estimate; unemployment held at 4.1%. Economists including Citigroup’s Veronica Clark link the shift to artificial intelligence infrastructure investment, as data-center construction creates demand for builders while procurement of servers, electrical equipment and cooling systems supports upstream manufacturing. A BLS diffusion index (measure of hiring spread across industries) covering 72 manufacturing subsectors reached its highest level in nearly four years. National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett said factory-construction employment has risen 90,000 since the Trump administration took office and pointed to unusually strong utility-sector hiring, while also saying three-month annualized CPI growth was about 1.6% and that a case for holding rates steady would be quite strong if the next report remains favorable. Gregory Daco of EY-Parthenon cautioned that manufacturing’s rebound follows three years of layoffs and remains below its earlier employment peak. Investors and the Federal Reserve will watch whether AI-related capital spending can sustain goods-sector hiring as services growth slows.