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Against the trend: February trucking jobs decline from January

Warehouse and rail also down; courier and messenger jobs are up

Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves

The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday reported seasonally adjusted jobs in the trucking sector totaled 1,475,700 in February, a decline from a month earlier. 

That is a decline of 4,000 jobs from the revised January figure of 1,479,700. But the January revision was significant as that month’s trucking jobs had been originally reported at 1,475,400. The end result is that jobs in trucking in February were mostly flat to where the industry thought they were in January, but the January number turned out to be higher than first reported.

The number of jobs in trucking between January and February had risen in nine of the prior 10 years. The one year when there was a decline was a minimal drop. 

The not seasonally adjusted figures for trucking also showed a decline. They dropped to 1,451,200 jobs from 1,455,500 jobs in January. 


In both categories, seasonally adjusted and not seasonally adjusted, employment in the trucking sector remains well below February of last year. For seasonally adjusted figures, there were 1,524,800 jobs in trucking in February of last year. In the not seasonally adjusted category, it was 1,496,800. 

Warehousing and storage, in which gains in jobs have been on a tear for months, also saw a downturn. Seasonally adjusted figures declined to 1,416,200 jobs, a drop of 1,100 jobs in the last months. But the number is still well above last year, when it stood at 1,327,700 jobs. 

Rail jobs continued their slide. Seasonally adjusted jobs in the rail sector were 141,800 jobs, down from 142,500 jobs a month earlier. A year ago, that number was 159,400 jobs. 

The couriers and messengers category continued to rise. On a seasonally adjusted basis, jobs there rose to 1,030,300, a 9,000-job gain from 1,021,300 positions. A year ago, it wasn’t even at the million-job mark, coming in at 882,800.


FreightWaves will continue to report on this story through the day.

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John Kingston

John has an almost 40-year career covering commodities, most of the time at S&P Global Platts. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment, one for steering coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the other for the launch of a public affairs television show, Platts Energy Week.