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San Diego County — Monthly Shipbuilding Employment

Private-sector jobs in ship and boat building (NAICS 33661) in San Diego County, California, home of the General Dynamics NASSCO and BAE Systems ship repair yards. Monthly employment, number of jobs, not seasonally adjusted.

ArchiveFrom before CK Economics turned to global trade on October 16, 2026. Its figures are still collected and it stays at this address, but it is no longer part of our trade coverage.

Data status: Current
Official statisticSource figures as of October 10, 2026Sources & methods
Sources
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Period covered
Jan 1990 – Mar 2026
Source figures as of
October 10, 2026
Geography
San Diego County, CA
Sector
Ocean Technology & Innovation (archived)
Seasonal adjustment
Not seasonally adjusted
Transformations
Views other than the level (changes, averages, volatility) are calculated by CK Economics from these figures
Revisions
Replaced with the source’s latest figures whenever it revises them.
Data status
Current
Limitations
Seasonal swings are left in: compare a period with the same period a year earlier.

Full method · Research standards

No projectionIn backtests at 40 past dates, a statistical projection (exponential smoothing, level only) was not clearly better than a no-change forecast: its errors over the next 3 months were 2% larger, short of the 5% improvement needed, so none is shown. How we decide

Key figures

CK estimateJobs · calculated by CK Economics from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data

Latest · Mar 2026
7,126
+8.9% vs a year earlier1
5-year change
−5.8%
since Mar 2021, −1.2% a year2
10-year change
−8.2%
since Mar 2016, −0.9% a year2
Record high
8,416
Feb 19923
Record low
4,656
Sep 20013
Where the latest ranks
65th pct.
Higher than 65% of the other 434 observations since Jan 19904
  1. 1Latest observation against the observation one year earlier (for weekly data, the nearest within three days).
  2. 2Latest observation against the observation five and ten years earlier; the yearly rate is the compound annual growth rate over the span.
  3. 3Highest and lowest published observations across the full history shown.
  4. 4Share of the other published observations that are lower than the latest one, rounded down.

Seasonal pattern

CK estimate

Each month of 2026 and 2025 against the average and range of the same month in 2021–2025. Calculated by CK Economics from the published series.

Monthly Jobs in 2026 and 2025 compared with the 2021–2025 average and range
2026 2025 2021–2025 average 2021–2025 range

Methodology

Each value is the QCEW count of private-sector jobs in NAICS 33661, ship and boat building, in San Diego County for the pay period including the 12th of the month, as reported by employers covered by unemployment insurance. QCEW publishes three monthly employment levels per quarter; each becomes one monthly row. Values are not seasonally adjusted. We use the five-digit industry 33661 rather than its six-digit component 336611 (ship building and repairing) because BLS suppresses 336611 for San Diego in 34 quarters since 2012, to protect the confidentiality of the very small boat-building remainder (336612). 33661 is published for every quarter since 1990, and ship building and repairing makes up more than 99% of it in recent years (about 94–98% in 1990–2010). Data for 2014 onward come from the QCEW Open Data API; 1990–2013 come from the QCEW annual bulk files by industry. QCEW is published about five to six months after the end of each quarter. Any quarter withheld for confidentiality would be left blank, never estimated; none is withheld for this series. Monthly values for 2014, 2019 and 2024 were checked against both the bulk files and the San Diego County area files, with no differences. BLS revises the previous quarters with each release, and its annual files are final about a year after the reference year. The series follows NAICS definitions back to 1990 as compiled by BLS. Projection: none. CK Economics backtests a statistical projection of this series (exponential smoothing, level only) by refitting it at past dates and scoring its forecasts against what happened. Its errors over the next three months were not at least 5% smaller than those of the better of a no-change forecast and repeating the same month a year earlier, so no projection is shown.

How we collect, check and project every dataset →

Source

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), San Diego County (06073), private ownership, NAICS 33661: https://data.bls.gov/cew/apps/data_views/data_views.htm — figures as published on 11 October 2026.

All data

435 observations, newest first · Jobs

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PeriodValueChange y/y
Mar 20267,126+8.9%
Feb 20267,094+8.2%
Jan 20267,064+8.1%
Dec 20256,962+5.7%
Nov 20256,886+5.0%
Oct 20256,722+3.6%
Sep 20256,643+1.3%
Aug 20256,515−1.1%
Jul 20256,567−1.6%
Jun 20256,511−2.0%
May 20256,486−2.1%
Apr 20256,537−1.2%
Mar 20256,543−0.2%
Feb 20256,557+1.3%
Jan 20256,536+1.1%
Dec 20246,584+0.9%
Nov 20246,560+0.4%
Oct 20246,488−2.5%
Sep 20246,556−2.4%
Aug 20246,589−3.4%
Jul 20246,674−2.4%
Jun 20246,642−4.1%
May 20246,625−6.1%
Apr 20246,619−7.4%