Americans Are Drinking Less Beer, But Craft Is King

In 1873 there were 4,131 breweries in the U.S. Over the next century the number fell and fell, hitting a low—not counting Prohibition, when it went to zero—of only 89 in 1978. It wasn’t that Americans had stopped drinking beer; overall consumption was higher than ever. But the business was following the path of so many others in the Industrial Age, consolidating and squeezing ever more out of each manufacturing facility.

Then in the 1980s, something not so typical happened. Craft breweries started opening, eventually by the thousands. Last year there were 7,450 breweries in the U.S., according to the Brewers Association, a craft-beer trade group. Brewery tallies from the Department of the Treasury and the Bureau of Labor Statistics are lower but show a similar growth trajectory, and the BLS estimates brewery employment has more than tripled since 2010, to 80,774 as of December.