For-hire carriers added 2,000 payroll jobs in June, but that was coupled with a 2,600-job downward revision in initial May figures, according to the latest estimates released Friday, July 6, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Payroll employment in trucking was up 0.15 percent over May and 3.1 percent over June 2011. Employment is up by 108,500 jobs, or 8.8 percent, from the bottom in March 2010, but it remains 110,700 jobs, or 7.6 percent, below the peak in January 2007.
Preliminary BLS figures show that the entire U.S. economy added 80,000 net civilian nonfarm jobs, which is slightly higher than the additions in April and May but well below the growth earlier this year. The unemployment rate held steady at 8.2 percent.
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.
