Truck transportation data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday is sort of like that mid-’70s dance hit: right back where we started from.
Seasonally adjusted data for October showed truck transportation employment at 1,546,200 jobs. That is down just 100 jobs from September.
The September figure was revised upward by 2,700 jobs. And the final revision for August – or final until the big annual revision that is revealed in February – cut last month’s August estimate by 2,100 jobs.
The end result is that the truck transportation jobs total in October was 2,000 fewer than where it stood a year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s after a year or more of bankruptcies, acquisitions and what many are describing as the worst freight recession ever.
That isn’t to say it hasn’t been a somewhat volatile ride getting largely back to where the industry started. Seasonally adjusted truck transportation jobs peaked in the past year at 1,556,400 jobs, so the latest total is down 10,200 jobs from there.
That came after a slight upward revision for September and August jobs.
More downturn at the warehouses
Warehouse jobs, after rising for six of the first seven months of the year – and declining every month in 2023 – have turned negative again. Total warehousing and storage jobs dropped by 7,000 in October to 1,764,100.
After the revisions, the September total was down 10,800 jobs. Factoring in the 900-job decline in August, October warehouse jobs were 18,700 fewer than where they stood in July.
And warehouse jobs are now at their lowest since September 2021, when they were in the midst of a historic run-up fueled by post-pandemic consumer purchases, much of it through e-commerce. That surge eventually took the jobs total to 1,942,200, about 178,000 more than the BLS reported for October.
Overall October number gets hit by stikes and weather
The small change in truck transportation came in a report that was stunning in another small change: just 12,000 jobs added nationally.
That led Aaron Terrazas, an independent labor economist, to urge caution in any analysis of what the BLS reported.
“It’s hard to read much into the headline numbers for October due to hurricane and strike-related distortions, but payroll gains came in well below muted consensus forecasts even as the unemployment rate held steady,” Terrazas said in an email to FreightWaves. “Downward revisions to August and September payrolls — which were not impacted by October distortions — suggest a softening trend in the labor market in late summer.”
Terrazas noted that key subsectors in transportation saw job losses.
“Most economists and policymakers will be quick to dismiss today’s Jobs Report numbers as an anomaly,” he said. “At moments like these, real-time private data become more important than ever, and those private data suggest a modest rebound in hiring in the most recent weeks.”
Terrazas noted that the report showed that more than half a million workers “reported being employed but not working due to adverse weather in October,” specifically the hurricanes that lashed parts of Florida and the Southeast last month.
David Spencer, vice president of Market Intelligence at Arrive Logistics, saw some upside in the relatively stable truck transportation numbers.
“Some volatility in the month of October as well as a promising outlook for peak season, at least compared to last year, is helping limit further job losses until the typical slowdowns we see in the mid to late first quarter,” he said.
But in a comment that echoes what some trucking executives have said on earnings calls, Spencer said that “a larger sustained recovery still seems a ways away given the capacity trends in the market today, and I expect any near term rate hikes to fade as the relief efforts die down in urgency.”
Shannon Gabriel, vice president of the Leadership Solutions Practice at TBM Consulting, provided her monthly analysis of what job platforms are saying.
“LinkedIn still shows 88,130 open jobs in logistics and supply chain, which doesn’t include the upcoming ramp up for transportation drivers to cover the holiday season,” she wrote in an email to FreightWaves. “That’s an impressive amount.”
Gabriel also said there were 967,675 resumes active on Indeed in the past month in the transportation sector, with 315,000 of them coming in just the past week.
“Break that down further and 216k are ‘ready to work now,’ which normally signifies that they’re currently unemployed,” Gabriel said. “The high number of active job seekers shows a job market that is in fast decline.”
In other highlights from the report:
In recent months, the average hourly wage for nonsupervisory and production employees in truck transportation had broken through $30 for the first time ever. That figure is reported with a one-month lag. But with recent revisions, it’s now less than $30 and was revised below that for the months when it looked like it had broken through that benchmark. The highest level was $29.96 an hour in July, $29.90 in August and $29.88 in September. Compensation for all employees was at a record $31.46 an hour.
The rail sector added 400 jobs but is still below October 2023. Employment in rail in October this year was 150,500; it was 152,800 a year ago.
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