Trucking CEOs may grumble loudly about how difficult it is to hire new employees, but it is being done.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ employment report released on Friday, June 3rd, the truck transportation sector added a double-digit number of seasonally adjusted positions in May for the third time in the last four months.
The number of jobs added in May was 13,300, bringing the total to 1,581,300. This follows the trend of record-high employment levels in the truck transportation sector.
Except for a 2,700-job drop in March, overall truck transportation employment has increased every month since the nearly 80,000-job drop in April 2020, the first month of the epidemic. Aside from the March drop, the increases this year have been 11,000 in February, 14,000 in April, and 13,300 in May.
With revisions to the March statistics, which are now definitive, truck transportation jobs have increased by 27,300 on a seasonally adjusted basis over the last two months. That amount has risen to 42,400 since December.
There have only been three months prior to this year with more than 10,000 job gains in the BLS record, and one of those was May 2020, coming after the huge crash one month before. There have already been three this year.
The non-seasonally adjusted statistic for truck transportation showed significant gains as well. It increased by more than 22,000 from the revised April figure of 1,549,500 employment. Truck transportation jobs are up 37,400 on a non-seasonally adjusted basis.
According to a logistics expert, independent owner-operators may be ‘transitioning back to employees.’
The amount, according to Jason Miller, an associate professor of logistics at Michigan State University, is “an exceptionally strong number.” He mentioned that the April non-seasonally adjusted figure had been revised upward by 2,100.
In an email to FreightWaves, he added a word of caution. “Part of me wonders if any of this is due to self-employed independent owner-operators shifting back to workers,” Miller added.
Miller emphasized in his email the subsector data that is released with a one-month lag. It states that general freight, long-distance truckload was up 3.7 percent year to April, while the LTL sector was up 4.1 percent. In comparison, the specialized long-distance industry increased by 8.5 percent.
“This is consistent with the Federal Reserve Board’s observation of a substantial increase in durable goods manufacturing,” Miller said.
The warehouse industry is likewise adding positions at a rapid pace. The overall number of jobs in the industry is currently over 1.8 million, with a total of 1,801,400. This represents an increase of 17,700 employees in a month, 34,800 jobs in two months, and more than 176,000 jobs in a year.
However, this is just on a seasonal basis. Employment was unchanged on a non-seasonally adjusted basis. “This shows that, notwithstanding Amazon’s declaration that it is leasing part of its fulfillment center space,” Miller added.
The warehouse industry is likewise adding positions at a rapid pace. The overall number of jobs in the industry is currently over 1.8 million, with a total of 1,801,400. This represents an increase of 17,700 employees in a month, 34,800 jobs in two months, and more than 176,000 jobs in a year.
Other noteworthy figures from the paper include:
- The truck transportation sector’s Producer Price Index is skyrocketing. It increased by 4.5 percent between March and April — the data on which is a month behind the employment figures — and by 4.3 percent the previous month. The warehouse sector PPI increased by 5.5 percent, while it was unchanged the previous month and decreased the month before that.
- On a seasonally adjusted basis, rail employment increased by 500 positions to 146,400 in May. This is the highest level since July of last year when they were at 147,300 positions. (There was 181,700 train employment in May 2018.)
- In April, the average hourly wage for manufacturing and nonsupervisory employees in the truck transportation industry increased by 10 cents per hour to $27.27. However, the number of hours worked increased by 30 minutes to 41.7 hours. That figure had been declining from a recent peak of 43.4 hours in August 2021.
