The most notable number in this week’s employment report for truck transportation might be a difference of 400 jobs.
In a Bureau of Labor Statistics report that noted relatively moderate movement in jobs statistics overall, the seasonally adjusted figure for truck transportation came in at 1,543,500 jobs.
That is only 400 more than the 1,543,100 reported in August of last year, the first month reported by BLS that took into account the closure of LTL carrier Yellow that month.
Total truck transportation jobs since then have climbed as high as 1,556,400 in March. But downward revisions in five straight months since then mean there were only a few hundred jobs more in August 2024 than just after Yellow shut its doors a year ago, throwing tens of thousands of drivers into the unemployment line.
A general assumption in the discussion then, and one that may have factored into the Teamsters’ decision not to bail out Yellow once again, is that drivers who lost their jobs in the Yellow closure would be able to find jobs in a trucking sector that, even when it’s weak, is always looking for drivers in the cab.
And while many of those Yellow drivers may have found jobs, the overall truck transportation jobs figure has barely budged from last year.
The August truck transportation jobs total of 1,543,500 was down by 1,400 from July. In turn, July was revised upward slightly, by about 200 jobs. June figures were revised downward by 200 jobs, to 1,546,900 from 1,547,100.
August’s figures – as will be the case for the rest of the year – do not take into account the changes to the underlying model used by the BLS in its calculation, announced in August. Those changes will show up in what is likely to be a significant revision for 2024 figures in February 2025, when the January numbers are reported. The transportation and warehouse sector is the only major sector that in the report was projected to have an upward revision in that annual update.
That the trucking sector posted yet another month of job declines suggests that a sign of recovery in the trucking market is not close at hand, according to David Spencer of Arrive Logistics.
“Similar to recent months, it is possible we are seeing carriers and drivers who had been patient throughout the duration of the ongoing downcycle throw in the towel after another lackluster peak season,” Spencer, the VP of market intelligence at Arrive, said in an email to FreightWaves. “The green shoots that had many hoping for a steeper recovery in 2024 seem to be fading. Anecdotally, there is no reason to believe we would expect much excitement in the spot market through the remainder of the year based on how easily Labor Day was handled by the capacity in the market.”
Spencer said a rate recovery is “another 9-12 months at best.”
Employment in the warehouse sector climbed again in August. The warehouse and storage sector continued its notable run of increases in employment, a radical departure from a 2023 that saw decreases in 11 of 12 months, many of them by double digits.
Warehouse jobs totaled 1,791,800, an increase of 3,900 from the prior month. It was the seventh time in eight months of 2024 that the warehouse jobs total was up.
However, it does come after a large downward revision for July. The updated figure for July of 1,787,900 jobs is 7,000 fewer than originally reported.
With the latest increase, there are 24,900 more warehouse jobs than there were in December 2023. But they are still well below the 1,942,200 jobs peak of April 2022.
A far more bullish conclusion from the report was provided by Shannon Gabriel, the vice president of leadership solutions at TBM Consulting Group. Her data: LinkedIn has about 86,000 supply chain jobs listed, and only about 54,000 logistics resumes on Indeed are listed as “ready to work now.”
There are currently 86,359 supply chain/logistics positions available on LinkedIn, many of which are salaried positions. Match that to 1,636,179 current transportation resumes on Indeed, with only 54,000 of those “ready to work now.”
“The unemployment number vs those actively pursuing new opportunities means the transportation industry remains strong,” she said in an email to FreightWaves. These numbers, the marginal change in August and the recent major BLS annual adjustment accurately reflect the ongoing trend I have been seeing around an active job market in the industry, with a significant number of jobs available throughout this year.”
In other data from the monthly report:
The truck transportation hours worked figure is notable in that it remains near an all-time high. The figure for July – the latest number available – came in at 29.93 hours worked. That’s just under the record of 29.95 from May. What is interesting is to look at this table and see how hours worked have been creeping higher for a decade. Ten years ago, in July 2014, the number was 20.44. It closed 2019, right before the pandemic, at 23.72. Now it’s knocking on the door of 30 hours.
But Uber Freight Economist Mazen Danaf, looking at the more granular data on types of trucking, reported on a one-month lag, noted that the figure for weekly hours put in by production and nonsupervisory employees in long-distance trucking – as opposed to the broader truck transportation sector – was at its lowest level since the early 2000s, “even surpassing the lows observed during the COVID pandemic and the Great Financial Crisis,” he said in an email to FreightWaves. “This suggests that a significant amount of capacity is currently unused due to insufficient demand.”
The Producer Price Index for truck transportation is reported at the same time as the national PPI is disclosed but is found in the monthly BLS report. The figure for July was the highest since May 2023.
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