Payroll employment among for-hire trucking companies in September dropped 0.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from August levels – about the same decrease as in August when employment logged the smallest decline in a year. Employment is down 9.5 percent from September 2008, according to preliminary figures released by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
With the estimated 3,600 jobs lost in September, the trucking industry has lost more than 83,000 jobs since the end of 2008 – a decline of 6.2 percent. Job cuts since July 2008 – just before the current decline – total 133,500. The BLS numbers 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.
For-hire trucking companies have shed 196,900 jobs, or 13.5 percent, since seasonally adjusted trucking employment peaked in January 2007 at more than 1.45 million, according to BLS figures.
