Throughout most of 2013, however, trucking employment was flat, changing very little since April, following some ups and downs in the first three months of the year.
However, December’s overall employment gains came in well below what economists had predicted — and what private payroll data reporting had suggested — adding 74,000 new jobs. The unemployment rate, however, fell to 6.7 percent. The economy as whole the last three months, including December, averaged 176,000 new jobs a month.
The for-hire trucking industry employed 1.3956 million payroll employees in December, up 24,800 jobs (1.8) since December 2012. Trucking employment as a whole is up 161,600 jobs — 13.1 percent — since March 2010’s bottom. It’s still 57,800 jobs, 4 percent, shy of January 2007’s peak.
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.
