For-hire trucking companies added 4,200 payroll jobs in December on a seasonally adjusted basis as the overall economy added 155,000 nonfarm jobs, according to the latest estimates released Jan. 4 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The national unemployment rate held steady at 7.8% after a slight upward revision of November’s rate.
Payroll employment in trucking in November totaled 1.3625 million jobs — up 0.31% from November and 3.4% from December 2011. Trucking employment is up by 128,300 jobs, or 10.4%, from the bottom in March 2010, but it remains 90,900 jobs, or 6.3%, below the peak in January 2007. The number of trucking jobs is up 3.4% since the beginning of the year.
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.
