Trucking jobs post slight decline in unexpected total payroll drop

Warehouse jobs, which have been mostly trending lower for the last year, reversed course with a small gain. Jobs in that sector rose to 1,834,700 jobs.

On top of that, January jobs were revised up to 1,832,400 jobs, a gain of 5,400 jobs from what was originally reported. 

But the combination  of the higher revision and the gains in February still have left warehouse jobs less than the December final number of 1,836,200 jobs. 

Even with recent gains, current employment is still way below a year ago. February 2025 warehouse employment was 1,883,400 jobs.

A sign of tighter capacity

The small decline in truck transportation jobs drew this comment from David Spencer, vice president of market intelligence at Arrive Logistics. 

“The continued decline in trucking employment reinforces what we’ve seen in the freight market over the past several months: capacity is tightening, and even small disruptions like weather are creating outsized rate volatility,” Spencer said in an email to FreightWaves. “While recent weather disruptions showed just how thin capacity has become, low demand is likely the catalyst for continued pullbacks in trucking employment. Although strong rates should fuel job growth, carriers aren’t hiring aggressively because freight demand still lacks consistency.”

Aaron Terrazas, an independent economist with a background in freight economics at Convoy, notes several data points about the overall jobs report.

The January total employment numbers which had surprised to the upside were revised down slightly, he said. There was a large downward revision in December numbers, from a 50,000 jobs gain to a 17,000 jobs decline. The overall impact then, he said, has been “a 10 month seesaw run of payrolls up one month and down the next month.”

Just noise?

Besides a large drop in courier employment–down 16,600 employees in February from January –the changes in the broad Transportation and Warehousing category subcategories like truck transportation were small enough that they constituted “statistical noise for now,” Terrazas said. 

Mazen Danaf, an economist with Uber Freight, noted recent data about an increase in tractor orders. He said that fact “goes against the continued decline in trucking employment.”

“Specifically, long-distance truckload employment dropped by 800 jobs in January and was 3.1% lower compared to the previous year, contradicting the trend in tractor orders,” he said in an email to FreightWaves. “This divergence may be explained by recent capacity reductions being driven not by organic market forces or the freight recession, as in the past, but by a tightening regulatory environment. Such regulatory-driven capacity reductions, occurring amidst a tightening market, are expected to intensify market tightness in the months ahead.”

In other key data in the employment report:

• The hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees for January–a data series that lags the total employment number by a month–rose yet again, to $31.92/hour from $31.76. It’s been up four straight months and continues to set records. Warehousing jobs were also at a record pay level for production and nonsupervisory employees, up 36 cts to $25.40/hour.

• Rail jobs continued to decline, dropping by 700 positions to 151,900 jobs. January was revised downward to 152,600 jobs from 153,000 jobs. The slow erosion of jobs totals in rail have taken total employment down by 4,500 jobs in just a year.

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