Trucking Gains 3,800 Jobs in September; Unemployment Rate Drops to 5.9%
Trucking accounted for 3,800 of the 248,000 jobs added in September, and the unemployment rate declined to 5.9%, the lowest level in six years, the Labor Department reported.
The job increase was above economists’ average forecast of a rise of 215,000, Bloomberg News reported.
The unemployment rate declined from 6.1% in August to the lowest level since July 2008, and the rise in jobs followed a revised 180,000 gain in August, according to Labor.
The transportation and warehousing sector, which includes trucking, added 1,900 positions in September, as the transit and ground passenger transportation segment lost 9,300 jobs.
“We appear to be ending the third quarter on a solid note,” Sam Bullard, senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities told Bloomberg. “This will continue the trend of gradual improvement we’ve been seeing so far since 2014. There’s greater traction in the U.S. economy right now.”
Manufacturing added 4,000 jobs after losing the same amount in August. Construction companies added 16,000 workers after the same rise the prior month.
The participation rate, which measures the number of Americans employed or looking for a job as a share of the working-age population, declined to 62.7%, the lowest since February 1978, from 62.8% the prior month, Bloomberg reported.
