Cookie statistics show a broad U.S. baking economy: manufacturers employed 32,585 people in 2022, while cookie and cracker manufacturing sales reached $10,292,170 thousand that year. The figures also capture product variety, holiday demand, recent price movement, and the role of cookies and brownies among reported sweet foods.
Contents
- Manufacturing scale
- Sales and payroll
- Workforce and operations
- Products and seasonal buying
- Prices and diet
Manufacturing scale
The U.S. cookie and cracker manufacturing category is a distinct industrial segment. The Annual Survey of Manufactures reported 29,412 employees in 2018, 28,699 in 2019, 26,932 in 2020, and 28,581 in 2021. These are industry employment measures, not counts for every bakery worker or every person selling cookies. Annual Survey of Manufactures: Summary Statistics for the U.S., States, and Selected Geographies
The 2022 Economic Census counted 446 firms and 386 establishments in U.S. cookie and cracker manufacturing. A firm is not the same measure as a physical establishment. The broader cookie, cracker, and pasta manufacturing grouping had 848 establishments. U.S. retail bakeries had 7,524 establishments, commercial bakeries had 2,918, and frozen-cake, pie, and other-pastry manufacturing had 251. The wider bakeries and tortilla manufacturing grouping had 11,979 establishments. EC2231BASIC Manufacturing: Summary Statistics for the U.S., States, and Selected Geographies: 2022
Sales and payroll
Reported sales, shipments, or revenue for U.S. cookie and cracker manufacturing remained above $10 billion in each listed year. The Census figures are in thousands of dollars.
| Year | Sales, shipments, or revenue | Annual payroll |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | $10,744,799 thousand | $1,489,418 thousand |
| 2019 | $11,279,386 thousand | $1,444,054 thousand |
| 2020 | $10,960,041 thousand | $1,453,952 thousand |
| 2021 | $10,626,820 thousand | $1,527,501 thousand |
| 2022 | $10,292,170 thousand | $1,705,414 thousand |
The highest listed sales measure was $11,279,386 thousand in 2019. The 2022 measure was $10,292,170 thousand, while annual payroll reached $1,705,414 thousand. The 2018–2021 observations come from the Annual Survey of Manufactures, while the 2022 observation comes from the Economic Census. They are reported measures from named Census programs, not a claim that survey design stayed identical. Annual Survey of Manufactures; EC2231BASIC Manufacturing
Reading the sales series alongside the workforce series gives useful context without turning the figures into an unsupported productivity calculation. Sales, shipments, or revenue describe the industry’s reported commercial output measure. Annual payroll describes compensation recorded for the industry. Neither measure alone identifies how much a typical package cost, how many cookies were sold, or how revenue was divided among manufacturers, retailers, and other businesses. The figures are therefore most useful as a scale indicator: cookie and cracker manufacturing was a multi-billion-dollar U.S. industry across the listed years, with payroll tracked separately from sales.
Payroll was $1,489,418 thousand in 2018, $1,444,054 thousand in 2019, $1,453,952 thousand in 2020, $1,527,501 thousand in 2021, and $1,705,414 thousand in 2022. These are annual payroll measures, not individual worker earnings or an average wage.
Workforce and operations
The 2022 Economic Census reported $1,084,574 thousand in annual wages for production and/or development workers and $620,840 thousand for other employees. For the pay period including March 12, 2022, there were 25,464 production workers and 7,121 other employees. The industry reported 47,846 thousand annual production-worker hours.
First-quarter measures were $258,278 thousand in payroll for production workers and $153,639 thousand for other employees. Total first-quarter payroll was $411,917 thousand. These are time-specific 2022 figures, not quarterly forecasts. The employee count for the 2022 industry measure was 32,585, compared with 29,412 in 2018, 28,699 in 2019, 26,932 in 2020, and 28,581 in 2021. Annual employment, pay-period workers, and worker categories answer different questions. EC2231BASIC Manufacturing: Summary Statistics for the U.S., States, and Selected Geographies: 2022
Operating costs also show what commercial production includes. In 2022, materials, components, packaging, and supplies cost $3,020,079 thousand. Purchased electricity cost $12,537 thousand, contract work cost $80,907 thousand, and total fringe benefits were $608,818 thousand. These are separate reported measures; they should not be combined into an unsupported new total. The figures quantify industrial categories without claiming that every bakery has the same cost structure.
The categories also help distinguish production activity from the consumer experience. A shopper sees a finished package, while the manufacturing record can separately identify supplies and packaging, electricity, contract work, and benefits. That separation is important when interpreting cookie statistics: a higher or lower reported cost in one category does not, by itself, establish a change in retail prices or a change in recipe ingredients. The Economic Census figures are best read as operating measures for the defined U.S. manufacturing industry in 2022.
Products and seasonal buying
U.S. cookie and cracker product shipments were valued at $11,502,647 thousand in 2014. Shipments of cookies, wafers, and nonfrozen ice-cream cones and cups were valued at $6,102,927 thousand in 2014. The second figure is a narrower category, so the two measures should not be treated as interchangeable. Manufacturing and International Trade Report: 2014 and 2013
A USDA Economic Research Service comparison of 2012–2014 scanner data counted 19,217 UPCs in cookies, 396 in cookie/cookie-bar mixes, 94 in frozen cookie dough, 15 in frozen ready-to-eat cookies, and 732 in refrigerated cookie/brownie dough. It also counted 7 Christmas-candy-cookie UPCs, 522 graham-cracker UPCs, and 418 saltine-cracker UPCs. UPC counts describe recorded product codes in that dataset, not unique recipes, brands, packages sold, or current shelf availability. Food-at-Home Expenditures: Comparing Commercial Household Scanner Data from IRI and Government Survey Data
The assortment counts also show why the word “cookie” can cover several market formats. The dataset separated ordinary cookies from mixes, frozen dough, ready-to-eat frozen products, refrigerated dough, and a Christmas-candy-cookie category. It separately listed graham crackers and saltines. Those labels are useful for understanding how the scanner comparison organized bakery products, but they should not be treated as a current ranking of popularity or as a complete inventory of every item available in the United States.
USDA ERS reported that purchases of sugar and cookie/cake mixes rose during the three-month October–December holiday baking period in 2012–2018. This is a seasonal purchasing pattern for that period, not a claim that every cookie category or household experiences the same increase. Tasty treats often have a seasonal sweet spot
Prices and diet
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. CPI for cookies rose 4.5% from May 2025 to May 2026. The unadjusted CPI rose 0.4% from April to May 2026, and the seasonally adjusted CPI also rose 0.4% over that interval. The seasonally adjusted measure was unchanged at 0.0% from February to March 2026 and rose 0.5% from March to April 2026. The May 2026 twelve-month median price-change measure was 1.07%. These CPI measures describe price movement under the BLS framework, not one brand, recipe, package, or bakery. Consumer Price Index News Release — 2026 M05 Results
USDA dietary statistics from What We Eat in America, NHANES 2015–2018, found that cookies and brownies represented 24% of all sweet-food instances reported by U.S. adults aged 20 and over. Among adults who reported sweet foods, sweet bakery products contributed a mean 372 kilocalories. A USDA example portion of two medium chocolate-chip cookies contained 295 kilocalories.
Among adult reporters of sweet foods, sweet foods supplied 16% of total daily energy, 36% of added sugars, and 22% of saturated fat. Sweet foods supplied 15% of total energy for reporters aged 20–39, 16% for those aged 40–59, and 19% for those aged 60 and over. These figures describe reported sweet-food consumption in 2015–2018, not a forecast and not nutrients attributable only to cookies. Sweet Foods Consumption by Adults in the U.S., What We Eat in America, NHANES 2015–2018