By Dan Leone, Staff Reporter This story appears in the April 11 print edition of Transport Topics.
The number of people employed in trucking rose 3% in March, compared with a year ago, to a seasonally adjusted 1.27 million, the Department of Labor reported April 1.
Trucking jobs grew by about 1,600 from February, according to preliminary March data from the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
BLS said all U.S. employers added 216,000 nonfarm jobs in March and the unemployment rate dipped to 8.8% from 8.9% in February.
The March gain was smaller than February’s monthly increase of 10,400 jobs. February’s gain was smaller than initially reported but still the biggest hiring spree for trucking in more than a decade (3-14, p. 4).
Trucking jobs, which are tracked under the department’s “truck transportation” employment category, have now increased in 10 of the past 12 months, BLS reported.
The latest jobs numbers “were very good,” said Bob Costello, chief economist for American Trucking Associations. “Employment up, unemployment down, [it] doesn’t get much better than that. Even manufacturing is adding jobs, [the] most in a decade.”
Manufacturing industries added 33,000 jobs last month, mostly in durable goods, Labor said.
Trucking jobs increased in March despite sharp spikes in the price of diesel. Fuel and labor are among the top costs of doing business for trucking companies, according to ATA.
The Labor Department’s broader transportation and warehousing sector, which includes modes of transportation besides trucking, employed about 4.24 million people in March — a 2% increase compared with March 2010 and less than a 1% month-to-month decline from February.
Since 1990, the earliest year for which data are available, trucking jobs peaked at about 1.45 million in January 2001 and fell as low as 1.23 million in March 2010, according to BLS.
The Labor Department currently projects that trucking will employ about 1.53 million people by 2018. That projection is higher than even the boom-level employment numbers seen in 2006 and 2007, BLS figures show.
Meanwhile, private-sector hiring last month rose by 230,000, after an increase of 240,000 in the prior month. It was the biggest back-to-back private-sector hiring gain since the corresponding period in 2006.
In a sign of private-sector ramp-up in heavy industry, automaker Chrysler, Auburn Hills, Mich., said it is planning to hire 1,000 engineers and high-tech workers. The company also is encouraging dealerships to hire sales associates as part of a drive to increase sales by 32% this year.
Senior Reporter Rip Watson and Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
