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U.S. Adds Manufacturing Jobs; QXO Bets on Housing Rebound; Novelis Targets Plant Restart By Mark R. Long | WSJ Logistics Report
U.S. manufacturers in January added jobs for the first time since Nov. 2024, a potential bright spot for a sector on which President Trump has staked much of his economic agenda. The Labor Department said employment in manufacturing ticked up to 12.59 million last month , 5,000 more than December.
A revision to the employment data, however, shows the postpandemic pullback in factory work was worse than previously known, the WSJ's David Uberti writes. The sector's workforce shrank by more than 300,000 roles since early 2023, pulling its total below 12.6 million people. Earlier federal figures put the job losses during that span around 200,000.
The vast buildout of AI data centers
fueled a 33,000-job increase in construction in January. Employment in the transportation and warehousing sector slipped 0.2% from December, and was 1.8% lower than a year earlier. Overall, the U.S. economy added 130,000 jobs in January , the strongest growth in over a year, with gains concentrated in healthcare and social-assistance fields.
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Building Supplies
QXO agreed to buy Kodiak Building Partners, a distributor of lumber, windows, doors and other construction supplies, from private-equity firm Court Square Capital Partners for about $2.25 billion in cash and stock. Investors cheered the deal, which the company said is a bet on a comeback for the housing market , Paul R. La Monica of Barron's writes.
Serial dealmaker Brad Jacobs formed QXO in 2024 and entered the building-supplies market last year with the $11 billion acquisition
of Beacon Roofing Supply. Jacobs has made it no secret that he was looking for more acquisitions, with a goal to create a one-stop shop for building supplies while cutting costs and boosting profits.
QXO has raised about $3 billion
to fund more deals, through offerings of convertible perpetual preferred stock to an investment group led by private-equity company Apollo Global Management and Singapore's sovereign-wealth fund, Temasek.
Auto Manufacturing
Repairs to a fire-damaged aluminum plant are set to wrap up by the end of June, helping relieve a costly bottleneck
for Ford Motor and other automakers, the WSJ's Bob Tita and Sharon Terlep report.
The aluminum maker Novelis said that once repairs are completed at its Oswego, N.Y., plant, operations will gradually step up over a period of months to reach regular-rate production. Repairs will cost at least $255 million, according to a preliminary estimate filed late last year.
Novelis supplies about 40% of the aluminum sheet increasingly used by the U.S. auto industry, according to analysts. Oswego is Novelis's largest automotive plant and the company supplies about a dozen customers.
Toyota Motor plans to release its first locally made EV in the U.S.
later this year. (Nikkei Asia) Number of the Day In Other News The U.S. budget deficit is projected to be $1.85 trillion, or 5.8% of GDP , this year, remaining flat for two years before widening over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office said. (WSJ) China's consumer inflation eased
at the start of 2026 after reaching a near three-year high in December, as food prices declined. (WSJ) The European Union scrapped a customs exemption
on shipments valued under $178, to counter the threat from e-commerce platforms in China and elsewhere to the bloc's businesses. (Dow Jones Risk Journal) The Pentagon told a second aircraft carrier strike group to prepare to deploy to the Middle East as the military prepares for a potential attack on Iran , according to three U.S. officials. (WSJ) A judge granted STG Logistics final approval of a bankruptcy loan . (WSJ) The semiconductor industry is " a bit panicked " about a memory chip shortage driven by the AI boom, according to the CEO of SMIC, China's largest contract chip maker. (WSJ) A Dutch court ordered a probe into alleged mismanagement
at Chinese-owned semiconductor company Nexperia and upheld the suspension of its CEO. (WSJ) The Teamsters are suing United Parcel Service, alleging the company's voluntary buyout offer to drivers
violates its 2023 labor contract. (Courier-Journal) The Trump administration warned that the Chinese-owned port of Chancay
was eroding Peru's sovereignty after a local judge ruled that it was exempt from some regulatory oversight. (Bloomberg) The U.K.'s development-finance agency and Canadian pension fund La Caisse suspended new investment
with DP World after its CEO's name appeared in files linked to Jeffrey Epstein. (Reuters) The U.S. Coast Guard awarded a contract to Davie Defense to build two Arctic icebreaking cutters
in Finland and three in the U.S. (Navy Times) Seattle-based Saltchuk Resources agreed to acquire
Great Lakes Dredge & Dock in a deal worth about $1.5 billion. (Dredging Today) Amazon plans to expand same-day delivery
of prescription pharmaceuticals to nearly 4,500 U.S. towns and cities by the end of this year. (Drug Store News) About Us
Mark R. Long is editor of WSJ Logistics Report. Reach him at [mark.long@wsj.com]. Follow the WSJ Logistics Report team on LinkedIn: Mark R. Long , Liz Young and Paul Berger .
This article is a text version of a Wall Street Journal newsletter published earlier today.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 12, 2026 07:02 ET (12:02 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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