BLS: more transportation/warehousing workers than believed

The largest decline was in Wholesale Trade, down 1.4%.

The benchmark numbers in the report are that total private employment is 178,000 jobs less than the current model numbers, while government jobs are 99,000 jobs. That is an overall estimate of 79,000 fewer jobs than is currently being used as a model.

It also is the smallest downward revision in three years. 

One key aspect the annual BLS revision does not report is the shift in subsectors. So there is no estimate on the shifts in the 2026 model in such fields as truck transportation, rail or warehousing. 

Besides those three, the other subsectors under Transportation & Warehousing are air transportation, water transportation, transit and ground passenger transportation, pipeline transportation, scenic and sightseeing transportation, support activities for transportation and couriers & messengers.

Warehousing and storage has the largest number of jobs among those subsectors, with a reported July number of 1.835 million. Truck transportation was second at 1.465 million. 

The total for the entire sector in July was approximately 6.6 million jobs. 

Aaron Terrazas, an independent economist who studies labor markets and with a background in transportation, said last year’s downward revision “was the first data canary hinting at a softening labor market — a trend that continued through late 2025 and early 2026.”

The big jump in Transportation and Warehousing, Terrazas said, was an “outlier,” suggesting slightly stronger payrolls while the data for most other industries suggested softer payrolls.”

Given that the specifics of the subsectors are not known, Terrazas said the “accelerating carrier exits” makes it unlikely that trucking drove the forecast gains in the larger sector.

“My hunch is that parcel delivery services and perhaps taxi services were the primary drivers of the upward revision,” he said in an email to FreightWaves.

Calendar for the rollout

Changes in the model will not show up in the monthly employment report until January numbers are reported in February. At that point, the preliminary estimates will have been further revised into a final new baseline model.

With that in hand, a comparison of what is in that report with what was originally reported by the BLS will provide insight into how individual sectors contributed to that 135,100 total number. 

The next employment report will be released Friday, September 4.

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