Trucking Industry Payrolls Rise by 4,700 in March
For-hire trucking added 4,700 jobs in March, while overall payrolls increased by 98,000, the Labor Department reported March 10.
The unemployment rate fell to 4.5%, the lowest level since May 2007, and wage gains slowed to a 2.7% year-over-year pace, Bloomberg News reported. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 180,000 advance.
Transportation and warehousing, which includes trucking, added 3,500 positions. The transit and ground passenger transportation sector lost 2,300 positions, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
The jobless rate unexpectedly dropped to the lowest in almost a decade, suggesting the labor market is returning to a more sustainable pace of progress, Bloomberg reported.
Support activities for transportation gained 600 jobs, and the couriers and messengers sector lost 1,200 position, according to BLS.
“Even if payrolls are slowing down, I’m not sure that that means the labor market is weakening,” Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities, told Bloomberg. “To the extent that it is slowing down or going to slow down, it’s probably more a function of tight supply than weakening demand.”
Construction added 6,000 jobs in March and manufacturing jobs increased by 11,000, according to the report.
Fed officials view the economy as “operating at or near maximum employment” though they’re somewhat divided over the extent of slack that remains in the labor market, according to minutes of their March meeting, Bloomberg reported.
The labor-force participation rate, which indicates the share of working-age people who are employed or looking for work, was unchanged at 63%. It touched 62.4% in 2015, the lowest since the 1970s.
The underemployment rate, a measure that includes those working part time who would take a full-time job if it were available, fell to 8.9%, the lowest since December 2007, from 9.2% in February. The number of people working part time who would prefer a full-time job fell by 151,000 to 5.55 million.
