Jewelry and Silverware Manufacturing (NAICS 33991)

A Histometrics industry primer for public-market and private investors.

Read this first. NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code 33991 is a five-digit "industry" level that contains exactly one detailed industry — 339910, Jewelry and Silverware Manufacturing. The two are effectively the same thing. This page gives the rollup figures and the key takeaways; for the full treatment — scope, investable universe, how the money works, demand drivers, regulation, and risks — see the 339910 primer.

1. Overview

This is the business of physically making jewelry and precious-metal tableware in the United States: engagement rings and wedding bands, gold chains and earrings, sterling flatware, gemstone cutting, and the findings and mountings that supply the trade. It is a small, old, craft-heavy manufacturing industry — roughly 1,800 establishments, about 19,000 payroll workers, and about $7.9 billion in annual shipments [1][2].

The domestic production base has been hollowed out by low-cost imports and survives mainly in high-touch niches: custom and bridal work, repair, gemstone cutting, and high-volume trade supply. It sits underneath a much larger, import-fed consumer market — around $63 billion a year in U.S. jewelry-and-watch retail sales [3]. For investors, the key structural fact is that there is no pure-play, publicly traded U.S. jewelry or silverware manufacturer to buy; the actual factories are private, and public exposure is to the demand side (retailers and brand marketers). See 339910, Section 4.

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

The NAICS hierarchy narrows one digit at a time. At the five-digit "industry" level, code 33991 breaks down into a single six-digit "national industry":

Because there is only one child, 33991 and 339910 describe the exact same set of establishments — the figures, the companies, and the economics are identical. The single-child structure is a NAICS legacy: in the 2012 revision, four older six-digit codes — 339911 (jewelry except costume), 339912 (silverware and hollowware), 339913 (jewelers' material and lapidary work), and 339914 (costume jewelry and novelty) — were merged into the single code 339910, which then carried through unchanged to the 2022 edition [4]. So this five-digit level is a pass-through, not a genuine grouping of distinct businesses, and costume jewelry sits inside it — a common point of confusion.

What the level excludes matters as much as what it contains. Watches and clocks are a different code (334519), so watch marketers are adjacent, not members; ordinary stainless and plated flatware falls under 332215 and 332999, meaning most "silverware" Americans own is classified elsewhere; plating and engraving of non-precious metal (332812/332813), synthetic industrial stones (327999), and jewelry retailing and repair are all outside this level [4]. This is a domestic-production classification, not a measure of U.S. jewelry spending. Everything below applies equally to both codes.

3. How big it is (this level's rollup figures)

Federal statistics for NAICS 33991 — identical to 339910 because it is the sole child:

Sources disagree on the revenue line. The federal shipments figure of ~$7.88 billion is the anchor, but a private research estimate puts industry revenue somewhat higher at around $8.8 billion [8][2]. Head counts vary by survey too: BLS's occupational survey reports 22,270 wage-and-salary jobs in the industry for May 2022 — of which production occupations are 12,120 (54%), including 6,340 jewelers and precious-stone-and-metal workers — against County Business Patterns' 19,188 paid employees for 2023 [5][1]. Different years and different collection methods, not a contradiction, but do not treat any one of these as the definitive count.

Undercount caveat — it cuts two ways. These figures count employer establishments only. Jewelry-making has an unusually large fringe of sole proprietors, bench jewelers, and artisan/online (Etsy-style) sellers who are non-employer businesses and fall outside the ~19,000 payroll headcount. BLS sizes that fringe from the occupational side: of roughly 35,100 jeweler and precious-stone-and-metal-worker jobs in 2024, 34% were self-employed and only 17% sat inside jewelry and silverware manufacturing [6] — so the number of people making jewelry for sale is materially higher than the payroll count. Pointing the other way, this manufacturing code drastically understates the industry's consumer footprint: ~$7.9 billion in domestic shipments sits under a ~$63 billion U.S. jewelry-and-watch retail market [2][3] — most of what Americans buy is imported or produced abroad.

4. The investable universe

Where value concentrates is the same story as the child, because there is only one child. The honest headline: no pure-play, publicly traded U.S. jewelry or silverware manufacturer exists. Public exposure is to the demand side, and it is small and top-heavy — Signet Jewelers (NYSE: SIG), the largest U.S. specialty jewelry retailer at roughly $6.7 billion of FY2025 revenue [3], then a long drop to Brilliant Earth (NASDAQ: BRLT) at about $438 million of FY2025 net sales, which uses third-party suppliers for substantially all of its manufacturing [9]. Watch-and-accessory marketers Movado (NYSE: MOV) and Fossil (NASDAQ: FOSL) are adjacent rather than in-code, and the global luxury parents (LVMH, Richemont, Swatch) are reachable only through foreign listings. The one listed name with real production assets, moissanite maker Charles & Colvard, is no longer a going concern in the ordinary sense: it was delisted from Nasdaq in April 2025 and entered Chapter 11 in March 2026 [10]. The genuine domestic manufacturing base is private — most notably Richline Group (a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, whose results Berkshire does not break out) and family-owned Stuller, the dominant trade supplier of mountings, findings, and loose stones. The concentration data above (top 4 = 37.4% of receipts, HHI 484.5) tell the shape of it: a few large trade suppliers and volume houses take a meaningful slice, with a long tail of ~1,600 small shops sharing the rest [2]. Full company table and private-owner detail: 339910, Section 4.

5. How the money works

Same mechanics as the child. This is a materials-pass-through, value-added manufacturing business, and the single most important idea is that owners do not make money on the metal. Gold, silver, platinum, and diamonds are pass-through inputs — the maker buys them, fabricates, and prices the finished piece to recover the metal cost plus a fabrication margin. Owner returns are governed by the value-added (fabrication) margin over input cost, capacity utilization and skilled-labor productivity, inventory turns and working-capital financing (inventory literally is gold and diamonds, so it is expensive to carry — the trade relies heavily on consignment "memo" and metal leasing), metal-price pass-through and hedging (rarely instantaneous, since differently-costed inventory moves through production and wholesale over months), scrap and refining recovery, and production yield and rework.

Two things the child now documents are worth carrying up. First, lab-grown diamond economics run the opposite way to metal: expanding production drives stone costs and retail prices down, which can widen unit margins for a well-positioned buyer but erodes inventory value and revenue per piece — Signet reported laboratory-grown merchandise at approximately 27% of its fiscal-2026 merchandise sales while warning that continued price declines could hurt revenue and margins [11]. Second, the business is sharply seasonal upstream, because wholesale production leads retail: Signet's fourth quarter historically generates roughly 35–40% of annual sales, and bridal was 49% of fiscal-2026 merchandise sales [11]. Those are downstream indicators, but they set manufacturers' order books and working-capital cycle. See 339910, Section 5, for the full breakdown.

6. What drives demand

Unchanged from the child: weddings and engagements (bridal is the demand anchor), consumer discretionary income and confidence, gifting occasions and self-purchase, and two swing factors — precious-metal prices (gold climbed past $3,000/oz in early 2025, peaked near $5,600/oz in January 2026, and traded around $4,000/oz in mid-2026 [12], lifting dollar sales but pushing buyers toward lighter, lower-metal designs) and lab-grown diamonds, now roughly 48% of engagement rings and about 42% of all diamond jewelry sold in the U.S. [13], with the U.S. the world's dominant lab-grown jewelry market [14] — expanding volume while compressing the stone value per piece. Precious-metal silverware demand is in structural decline. A fourth force the child adds: CAD/CAM and e-commerce shift power toward makers who can produce or customize rapidly after an order, at the cost of smaller initial orders, more SKUs, and higher return exposure. On the supply side, BLS projects employment of jewelers and precious-stone-and-metal workers to decline 5% from 2024 through 2034, citing automation and imports [6]. Detail in 339910, Section 6.

7. Regulation

Same regime as the child: lightly regulated on entry, but with specific labeling, sourcing, and financial-crime rules — the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) Jewelry Guides on karat/fineness and mandatory lab-grown disclosure (whose 2018 revision broadened the definition of "diamond" to encompass lab-grown, accelerating that segment) [15], the National Stamping Act, "Made in USA" claim standards, anti-money-laundering obligations under the Bank Secrecy Act for dealers in precious metals and stones, conflict-minerals and responsible-sourcing frameworks (Dodd-Frank Section 1502, the Kimberley Process), and Consumer Product Safety Commission limits on lead and cadmium. The child adds one regime the parent previously omitted: OFAC's Russian diamond sanctions, which bar third-country-processed Russian nonindustrial diamonds of at least 1.0 carat from March 1, 2024 and at least 0.5 carat from September 1, 2024, subject to licenses and exceptions [16] — a live provenance-documentation burden on anyone importing stones. The tariff/customs picture remains an active variable. Full list: 339910, Section 7.

8. Consolidation

The concentration figures for this level are the child's: top 4 firms hold 37.4% of receipts, top 8 hold 48.4%, top 50 hold 74.8%, and the HHI is 484.5 — well below the 1,500 threshold antitrust regulators treat as "unconcentrated" [2]. Translation: fragmented at the bottom, moderately concentrated at the top of the value chain. The defining historical force has been import substitution — cheaper production in India, China, Thailand, and Italy hollowed out U.S. volume manufacturing over two decades (Oneida moved flatware offshore in 2004, and most branded silver followed), and U.S. jewelry imports now run around $11.5 billion a year [17], larger than this code's entire domestic shipments base on a roughly (not exactly) comparable footing. What survived at home is what imports handle poorly: custom and bridal work, repair, gemstone cutting, rapid trade supply, and Made-in-USA niches. Two current shifts compound it — retail consolidation (Signet's acquisitions of Blue Nile, James Allen, and Diamonds Direct) squeezing suppliers [3], and the lab-grown disruption re-routing the diamond value chain toward India and China [13][14]. See 339910, Section 8.

9. Risks

Identical to the child: cyclicality (discretionary luxury), precious-metal volatility (gold's near-doubling into 2026 [12] swings both input costs and inventory carrying value, while commodity deflation creates the mirror-image inventory problem for generic lab-grown stones), import competition and tariff whiplash, lab-grown deflation of per-piece stone value [13], structural decline of precious-metal flatware, skilled-labor scarcity (bench jewelers, casters, and stone-cutters age out faster than they are replaced, and training can take a year or more [6]), preference shifts (experiences over goods, secondhand/vintage), and regulatory/reputational exposure across conflict minerals, AML, and sanctions. The child also flags the operational tail that private buyers underwrite directly: theft and security, supplier fraud, undisclosed treatments or synthetics, foreign exchange, customer concentration, fashion obsolescence, returns, and chemical/fume exposure. See 339910, Section 9.

10. How to invest and the outlook

Because 33991 is its one child, the routes are the same. Public exposure is indirect and demand-side — jewelry retail/brand equities (SIG, BRLT) and adjacent watch marketers (MOV, FOSL), plus foreign-listed luxury parents (LVMH, Richemont, Swatch); a gold ETF or miner is a distinct bet on the metal, which is the opposite trade to owning a fabricator; and Charles & Colvard (OTC: CTHR), now in Chapter 11, is distressed special-situation exposure rather than a conventional listed comparable [10]. The actual industry is owned privately — trade suppliers and contract manufacturers (the Richline/Stuller model), branded direct-to-consumer makers, refining/findings specialists, or the narrow Made-in-USA premium niche — where investors should expect thin fabrication margins, heavy and expensive working capital, real cyclicality, and value that lives in brand, design, and service rather than in the metal; diligence should separate factory contribution from brand and retail markup and test pass-through, scrap recovery, inventory aging, consigned stock, bench-skill retention, and owner dependence. Outlook: elevated gold prices keep pushing mix toward lighter designs and lab-grown stones [12][13]; tariffs are easing but not resolved, with the U.S. and India moving toward an ~18% rate in a February 2026 framework after 2025's sharp increases on the country where much of the world's diamonds are cut [17]; reshoring interest is real but marginal against entrenched offshore cost advantages. Net: a stable-to-slowly-consolidating specialized manufacturing base under a larger, import-fed consumer market — niche, cyclical, and craft-and-scale rather than a growth sector. Full investment discussion and near-term drivers: 339910 primer, Section 10.

---

Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau. County Business Patterns, 2023 (NAICS 339910: establishments, employment, annual and first-quarter payroll). 2025. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
2. U.S. Census Bureau. 2022 Economic Census — receipts, firm counts, and concentration ratios (CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50, HHI), NAICS 339910. 2024. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html
3. Signet Jewelers Ltd. Annual Report (Form 10-K), Fiscal Year 2025 (U.S. jewelry-and-watch market ~$63B; Signet revenue, share, brand mix, and acquisitions). 2025. https://s26.q4cdn.com/755441662/files/doc_financials/annual/signet-annual-report-FY2025.pdf
4. NAICS Association / U.S. Census Bureau. NAICS 2022 Code 339910 — Jewelry and Silverware Manufacturing: definition, inclusions, cross-references, and the 2012 four-code merger. 2022. https://www.naics.com/naics-code-description/?code=339910
5. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2022, NAICS 339910. https://www.bls.gov/oes/2022/May/naics5_339910.htm
6. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Outlook Handbook: Jewelers and Precious Stone and Metal Workers (median wage, self-employment share, employment projections, training time). https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/jewelers-and-precious-stone-and-metal-workers.htm
7. U.S. Small Business Administration. Table of Small Business Size Standards (NAICS 339910: 700 employees). 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
8. IBISWorld. Jewelry & Silverware Manufacturing in the US (NAICS 339910). 2025. https://www.ibisworld.com/classifications/naics/339910/jewelry-and-silverware-manufacturing/
9. Brilliant Earth Group, Inc. Form 10-K, Fiscal Year 2024 (net sales; third-party manufacturing). 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1866757/000186675725000038/brlt-20241231.htm
10. Charles & Colvard, Ltd. Announcement of delisting from Nasdaq. 2025. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/charles--colvard-ltd-announces-delisting-from-nasdaq-302434844.html; Charles & Colvard. Restructuring announcement. 2026. https://ir.charlesandcolvard.com/news-releases/news-release-details/charles-colvard-commences-voluntary-restructuring-process
11. Signet Jewelers Ltd. Form 10-K, Fiscal Year 2026 (lab-grown share of merchandise sales, bridal share, fourth-quarter seasonality). 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/832988/000083298826000055/sig-20260131.htm
12. Forbes Advisor / Fortune. Gold Price data — >$3,000/oz early 2025; record high $5,597/oz (Jan 29, 2026); ~$4,000/oz mid-2026. 2026. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/gold-price/
13. Rapaport / industry reporting. Lab-grown diamond share of U.S. engagement rings (~48%) and diamond jewelry (~42%). 2025–2026. https://rapaport.com/magazine-article/uncertainty-is-the-new-diamond-world-order/
14. Coherent Market Insights / CNBC Africa. Lab-grown diamond value chain — U.S. share of global lab-grown jewelry sales; India/China production dominance. 2026. https://www.cnbcafrica.com/2026/the-lab-grown-monopoly-how-the-united-states-india-and-china-built-a-hermetic-value-chain
15. Federal Trade Commission. FTC Approves Final Revisions to Jewelry Guides. 2018. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2018/07/ftc-approves-final-revisions-jewelry-guides
16. U.S. Department of the Treasury, OFAC. FAQ 1165: Russian diamond sanctions. https://ofac.treasury.gov/faqs/1165
17. 25HOURS. "US Jewelry Imports by Country Data: A 2026 In-Depth Analysis" (imports ~$11.5B; suppliers India/China/Thailand/Italy; 2025–2026 tariffs and the February 2026 U.S.–India framework). 2026. https://25hours.net/blogs/insights/us-jewelry-imports-trade-data