Job Creation by Year (2012–2023)
Job creation is vital for economic growth, as it boosts consumer spending and increases business revenues. Aside from having more demand for their products and services, companies also benefit from the larger workforce brought about by new jobs.
How has the number of jobs created in the United States evolved in recent years? Here’s a closer look.
Number of jobs created by year
According to the latest annual job creation numbers published by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 33.85 million jobs were created in 2022. This is calculated by aggregating the total number of gross job gains recorded per quarter. 2022’s figure marks a 3.17% annual fall, and first decline in three years and the largest in at least a decade.
The data analyzing the number of jobs created by year shows that this figure has fluctuated over the past decade. In 2013, 28.41 million new jobs were created—a 1.01% rise from the previous year.
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Growth continued in 2014 and at a faster rate, as the number of jobs created rose by 3.05%, to 29.27 million. In 2015, this figure grew by 1.76%, to 29.79 million, before falling marginally by 0.19% in 2016, to 29.73 million. The economy added 437,000 million jobs in 2017, a 1.47% annual rise, taking the number of jobs created per year past the 30 million mark. A 0.73% growth in 2018 saw this figure further increase to 30.39 million, before a fractional 0.18% decline followed in 2019, as the number fell to 30.33 million.
Statistics on annual job creation show growth returned in the two following years and at an accelerated rate, as the market recorded increases of 6.81% and 7.92% in 2020 and 2021, respectively. This brought the number of jobs created to 32.4 million in 2020 and 34.96 million in 2021.
Job creation by year: Q1 2022–Q1 2023 breakdown
A breakdown of the number of jobs created per quarter in 2022 shows that 8.56 million positions were created in the first quarter of the year. This was a 2.75% annual increase but a 10.58% plunge from the previous quarter.
This figure fell to 8.35 million in Q2, before rising back up to 8.84 million. In the final quarter of the year, 8.11 million jobs were created. The most recent data shows that in Q1 2023, the country gained 8.04 million new jobs.