The for-hire trucking industry added jobs for the third consecutive month in June, according to preliminary figures released July 2 by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Payroll employment was up 1,000 over May, but BLS also has revised May figures upward by nearly 4,000. Combined with strong gains in April, payroll employment in trucking is up 8,800 jobs since March, according to preliminary BLS numbers.
The trucking industry is still chipping away at big job losses in the last half of 2009. The number of trucking jobs was down 24,000, or 1.9 percent, in June compared to June 2009, according to the latest BLS numbers. Payroll employment was 1.236 million jobs – down 217,200 or 14.9 percent, from peak trucking employment in January 2007.
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. Nor do the numbers reflect the total amount of hiring since they only include new jobs, not replacements for existing positions.
Nationwide, the same factor that drove the recent surge in jobs led to a sharp reversal. Non-farm payroll employment fell by 125,000 due to the loss of 225,000 temporary jobs due to the 2010 Census.
