The for-hire trucking industry added 1,500 jobs in May on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the monthly employment report released June 6 by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
April’s originally reported addition of 6,800 jobs in the industry, however, has been downwardly revised to 4,700.
The U.S. economy as a whole in May added 217,000 non-farm jobs, BLS reports, but the country’s unemployment rate was unchanged at 6.3 percent. That’s still the lowest unemployment rate in more than five years.
For-hire trucking now has 1.4009 million payroll jobs, according to BLS, up 22,400 jobs from May 2014 (1.6 percent) and up 175,900 jobs (13.6 percent) from March 2010, the low point in the most recent recession. However, trucking employment remains 52,500 jobs (3.6 percent) below January 2007′s peak.
Total transportation and warehousing employment grew by 16,400 jobs in May. Employment also grew in construction (6,000), manufacturing (10,000), retail trade (12,500) and professional and business services (55,000). The government added 1,000 jobs in the month.
Note: 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.
