Payroll employment among for-hire trucking companies in June dropped 0.9 percent from May levels and 9.2 percent from June 2008 on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to preliminary figures released by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. The latest numbers also reflect a slight upward revision in trucking employment levels for May and a slight downward revision for April.
With the estimated 11,000 jobs lost in May, the trucking industry has lost more than 75,000 jobs since the end of 2008 – a decline of 5.6 percent. Job cuts since the beginning of August when trucking job cuts began to accelerate total 124,700, or 9 percent. 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.
Seasonally adjusted trucking employment peaked in January 2007 at more than 1.45 million, according to BLS figures. Since then, for-hire trucking companies have shed nearly 189,000 jobs, or 13 percent.
In May, the decline in trucking employment slightly outpaced that in the entire U.S. economy. Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 467,000 jobs or 0.4 percent from May to June on a seasonally adjusted basis. Compared to June 2008, nonfarm payroll employment is down 4.1 percent.
