Monthly trucking employment report: Steady after lots of volatility

Mazen Danaf, an economist at Uber Freight (NYSE: UBER), said the numbers, though only a small change, “continued to defy expectations.”

“We usually expect trucking employment to fall in the last few months of the year, something that did not happen in 2023,” he said in an email to FreightWaves.

“Aside from Yellow’s bankruptcy, we haven’t seen any significant reduction in capacity,” Danaf added. “On the contrary, Yellow’s ex-drivers have likely flooded adjacent sectors such as truckload and specialized freight, keeping these markets saturated.”  

David Spencer ofArrive Logistics noted the small movement in the numbers and said in an email to FreightWaves that “there is reason to believe employment declines will be more gradual than previously anticipated.”

Spencer said he earlier had believed carriers that normally ramp up at this time of year in anticipation of a Christmas rush “may have taken a step back from the normal hiring ramp up and are comfortable handling the seasonal demand surges with the staff already in place.” He added that the stable numbers he sees in the data are a sign of “relative stability.”

The most notable numbers in the report continue to be in warehousing and storage as the great pandemic hiring binge of 2020 and 2021 reverses itself.

Warehouse jobs declined 8,100 jobs. That is less than in October, when, after revisions, the decline from September was 13,000 jobs. Warehouse and storage jobs have now fallen 16 of the past 17 months. In the one month they didn’t decline, they were flat.

Warehouse jobs peaked at 1,960,300 in June 2022. At 1,861,000 jobs in November, that is a decline of 99,000 jobs. However, in March 2020, right as the pandemic was hitting, warehouse jobs stood at 1,342,000. Even with the declines of the last 17 months, warehouse is a sector that has added huge levels of employment. 

In other data from the report:

• Rail employment declined. And although the numbers were small, the industry has been under such pressure to replenish its ranks and build a bigger workforce that the move is significant. On a seasonally adjusted basis, jobs in rail slipped below the 150,000-job level after declining 300 jobs, but October was revised downward also. It puts rail jobs at 149,600, just 1,200 jobs above last November. 

• Average weekly hours in truck transportation for production and nonsupervisory workers continued to bounce along in a range of 40.4 to 40.8, coming in at 40.6. It’s been in that range for four straight months and seven of the last nine. But what’s notable is how much lower that is from the high-water mark of 343.4 hours posted in August 2021.

• The national unemployment rate came in at 3.7%. But for transportation and warehousing, it was 4.5%. That is down 300 basis points but is still way above the June mark of 3.3%.  

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