Trucking adds 1,400 jobs in August

Trucking Jobs August 2012 Numbers E1347024186368

For-hire trucking companies added 1,400 payroll jobs in August as the overall U.S. economy added 96,000 nonfarm jobs, according to the latest estimates released Friday, Sept. 7, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s the weakest month-to-month growth in trucking since April, although BLS had revised July figures upward by 3,700 before calculating the August change.

Payroll employment in trucking was 1.352 million jobs — up 0.1% over July and 3.8% over August 2011. Trucking employment is up by 117,000 jobs, or 9.5%, from the bottom in March 2010, but it remains 101,900 jobs, or 7.0%, below the peak in January 2007. The number of trucking jobs are up 2.5% since the beginning of the year.

The 96,000-job gain in overall U.S. employment was below expectations and weaker than the 141,000-job increase in July, although it was the second-largest increase since March. The unemployment rate dropped two-tenths of a percentage point to 8.1%.

The BLS numbers for trucking reflect all payroll employment in for-hire trucking, but they don’t include trucking-related jobs in other industries, such as a truck driver for a private fleet. Nor do the numbers reflect the total amount of hiring since they only reflect the number of employees paid during a specified payroll period during the month. Due to high turnover rates, the BLS estimates may overstate the number of job positions due to the methodology used in the agency’s Current Employment Survey.