Trucking Loses 800 Jobs in August as Unemployment Rate Declines
Trucking lost 800 jobs in August as the economy added 142,000 jobs and the unemployment rate declined to 6.1%, the Labor Department reported.
The job increase was below economists’ forecasts of a rise of 230,000, Bloomberg News reported. The rise in payrolls was weaker than the lowest estimate in the Bloomberg survey.
The unemployment rate declined from 6.2% in July, and the rise in jobs followed a revised 212,000 gain in July, according to the Labor Department.
The transportation and warehousing sector, which includes trucking, added 1,200 positions in August.
“In the coming quarters, we should see some slowing” in payrolls gains, Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., told Bloomberg. “There still are some areas where we’d like to see further improvement” in the labor market, such as the number of long-term employed and the pace of wage growth, he said.
Manufacturing was flat after an increase of 28,000 in July. Construction companies added 20,000 workers after a 31,000 rise the prior month.
The number of long-term unemployed, those out of work for 27 weeks or more, totaled 2.96 million, the fewest since 2.7 million in January 2009, Bloomberg reported.
The so-called participation rate, which indicates the share of working-age people in the labor force, decreased to 62.8%, matching the lowest since 1978, from 62.9% a month before, according to Bloomberg.
