Editor’s note: This story is not being updated as we consider alternate ways to share jobs data. Stay tuned!

How many jobs did the trucking industry gain or lose in the past month and year-to-year?

Each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides a glimpse into the answer, using a sampling of payrolls in various sectors to estimate shifts in the state of U.S. employment. Economists and industry executives alike use this data to check the pulse of the economy and forecast future trends.

Transport Dive has created two charts to track employment data month-to-month and help trucking executives with their forecasting needs.

Trucking industry gained at least 3,000 payroll jobs in March

All employees in truck transportation, with and without seasonal adjustments

In addition to overall employment trends, the BLS also estimates payroll jobs in several subsectors such as local, LTL and TL freight trucking or jobs dedicated to office and household goods moving.

The BLS releases these estimates a month after the headline figure, which is shown in a chart above. So if you are looking at this table in December, the latest available data is likely for October.

Long-distance freight LTL lost the most jobs YoY as of February

A preliminary estimate of jobs for trucking subsectors, plus their share of total industry jobs and twelve-month gains or losses

A note on the data

The data used in this story was retrieved from the BLS’ Current Employment Statistics, which provides monthly estimates based on payroll data.

While the data is helpful to estimate workforce gains and losses, there are a few caveats worth noting:

  • Payroll data excludes thousands of drivers who are not on company payrolls. As such, shifts in this dataset do not always mean there is less capacity on the road.

  • The BLS provides both seasonally adjusted and not seasonally adjusted monthly jobs estimates. The agency notes its adjusted data can eliminate expected seasonal cycles.

Historical data can be retrieved from the BLS by using the series report tool. Transport Dive used this tool to retrieve employment figures from the past 10 years for each of the following data series:

  • All employees, thousands, truck transportation, not seasonally adjusted (CEU4348400001)

  • All employees, thousands, general freight trucking, local, not seasonally adjusted (CEU4348411001)

  • All employees, thousands, general freight trucking, long-distance truckload, not seasonally adjusted (CEU4348412101)

  • All employees, thousands, general freight trucking, long-distance less than truckload, not seasonally adjusted (CEU4348412201)

  • All employees, thousands, used household and office goods moving, not seasonally adjusted (CEU4348421001)

  • All employees, thousands, other specialized trucking, local, not seasonally adjusted (CEU4348422001)

  • All employees, thousands, other specialized trucking, long-distance, not seasonally adjusted (CEU4348423001)

Editor's note: Do you know of other caveats to this data? Is there other information you would like to see visualized? We’d love to hear your thoughts, email us at [email protected]