Truck transportation jobs up year over year for first time since 2023–BLS

It may be hard to believe given bankruptcies and layoffs, but the number of truck transportation jobs reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for May is now higher than it was a year ago.

It’s the first month since April 2023 when truck transportation figures from the BLS have surpassed those of the prior year.

In a trucking market that all still agree is experiencing some level of weakness, how did this happen?

It begins with the annual BLS model revision  for both 2024 and 2025. The data in that revision is released with the February monthly employment report. In the past two years, the revision recorded significant declines in the number of truck transportation jobs assumed in the model.

With that base then having taken two consecutive downward hits in a row, the relatively steady pace of increases in recent months has finally resulted in a year-over-year comparison that shows the most recent figure more than that of the corresponding month a year earlier.

The milestone ironically came even as the number of truck transportation jobs declined slightly in May from April, down 900 jobs to 1,525,400. A year earlier, the number of jobs was 1,521,600.

Since that year-ago figure, truck transportation jobs sank as low as 1,514,500 in October. But revised figures for March posted Friday saw the number reach 1,524,100 jobs, and there was a further upward revision for April. The relatively small decline in May was far less than the big decline for May posted a year ago, resulting in a positive year-on-year comparison.

The data on truck transportation jobs does not include owner-operators. If capacity is reduced through an owner-operator taking a truck out of business, and the driver does not take a new seat behind the wheel at a company, that action will not show up in the data as lost capacity.

But if existing capacity in fleets remains relatively steady and owner-operators are putting their trucks out of service, the BLS data can capture a workforce size that looks to be relatively stable or growing.

In reviewing the data, Aaron Terrazas, an independent economist who has long studied transportation employment data, focused on the fact that the overall jobs report came in better than expected.

“Again and again, the first print numbers are surprisingly resilient,” Terrazas said in an email to FreightWaves of the overall increase in employment of 139,000 jobs. “Today feels like deja-vu. The tape is broken and we’re repeating last month’s lessons: Headline payroll gains came in strong (again), driven by healthcare (again), with a stable unemployment rate (again), with less-than-expected decline in federal government employment (again), with stagnating labor force participation (again), and with substantial downward revisions to the past two months (again).”

Terrazas did not read too much into the transportation sector figures. “At this point, the monthly changes are more noise than signal,” he said. “Supply chains (and supply chain planners) are just surviving day-to-day with the shifting winds of policy uncertainty. Few are placing long-term bets at the moment; most are just waiting for the dust to settle.”

David Spencer, the vice president of market intelligence at Arrive Logistics, also in an email to FreightWaves, noted the year-over-year milestone and that it occurred in a time of uncertainty.

“Despite the slight downturn in May, total employment is up nearly 11,000 jobs from the multi-year low in October, and 9,300 jobs over the past 3 months,” he said. “Trade war and tariff driven disruptions are likely the culprits behind recent employment volatility as pull forward demand likely drove the large employment gains earlier in the year.”

Among the biggest changes month to month in the report was a large revision in both the March and April figures for warehouse jobs. 

The latest BLS report put warehouse jobs for March at 1,832,400 jobs, down 11,200 jobs from what was reported for March last month.

The latest figure for April is 1,832,100 jobs, a huge downward revision of 21,300 jobs from what was initially reported for April. 

The March figures are now “final” in that they won’t be subject to another monthly revision. But they can and likely will change when the annual revision is posted in February. 

Other data points in the monthly BLS report:

• Unlike truck transportation employment, rail employment is down from a year ago despite data showing the growth of intermodal business. Rail jobs in May totaled 153,700. A year ago, employment was 157,400 jobs. 
• For the first time ever, the average hourly wage of production and nonsupervisory employees in truck transportation hit the $31-an-hour mark, coming right in at that number for April. The wage data operates on a one-month lag. A year ago, it was $29.70 per hour. The warehousing and storage sector also hit an all-time high in average hourly wage. But at $25.53 an hour, it’s well below the number for truck transportation. 
• Truck transportation and warehousing are both part of a larger segment called Transportation and Warehousing. The unemployment rate in that sector was 4.4% for May, up from April’s 3.6%.  But the April figure looks like an outlier, as it was 4.7% in February and 4.6% in March.

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