After a year in which big monthly swings — mostly gains — have been the norm for truck transportation jobs reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, November saw a minimal change.
But the change, nonetheless, was higher. November truck transportation jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to BLS, came in at 1,601,300. That’s a gain of 1,300 jobs from a revised October figure of an even 1.6 million.
However, that October figure was revised downward from an initial report of 1,601,100 jobs. So the latest November figure is just 200 jobs more than what was originally reported for October.
The relatively small gain in November comes as 2022 is wrapping up a year in which the gains in truck transportation were double digit in three months and above 5 million in four others.
Another revision, though, showed continued hiring resiliency in truck transportation jobs. The September jobs figure was revised up by 4,600 jobs to 1,592,500 from 1,587,900. That is significant because when the BLS numbers for September first were released, they showed a one-month decline from August of 11,400 jobs, the biggest drop in years.
But with the September revision, the decline from August was nowhere near that big, coming in at 4,900 jobs. And given that reduced decline, coupled with the gains in October and November, it means truck transportation jobs stand at 3,900 more than they were in August.
With earlier revisions for July and August putting those months as a gain in jobs, it means the September decline, now less than originally believed, is one of only two months recording a drop in truck transportation positions since the massive decline of April 2020. The other was in March of this year.
Not seasonally adjusted moves in truck transportation also recorded a small change, but it went in a different direction.
For November, that figure came in at 1,614,700 jobs, down from 1,616,400 jobs a month earlier, a drop of 1,700. The September revision was an upward move of 7,100 jobs, higher than the revision in the seasonally adjusted jobs.
The most stunning move came in the warehouse sector, though given recent declines the changes aren’t quite as shocking as they might have been otherwise. Seasonally adjusted jobs in that sector dropped to 1,727,600, down from 1,740,100 for a decline of 12,500.
That downturn brings the total number of jobs lost in the sector to 63,500 in the past five months since hitting a high of 1,791,100 in June. Warehouse jobs are now less than where they were in January, when the BLS reported a total of 1,733,800.
But the warehouse jobs headline figure, which represents seasonally adjusted data, is wildly different this month than the not seasonally adjusted data. The November not seasonally adjusted figure for warehouses actually rose to 1,773,900 jobs from 1,767,400. That puts the difference between the seasonally adjusted and not seasonally adjusted jobs at 46,300.
Not seasonally adjusted figures are changed to seasonally adjusted through a process that takes into account past trends and data. One possibility to explain the huge divergence is that the not seasonally adjusted figures rose by an amount less than expected, were then adjusted downward into seasonally adjusted data by a large amount in the equation that makes that change, and the move resulted in the significant decline reported in the seasonally adjusted data.
Two other highlights from the monthly report:
- Rail jobs changed little, as they have been doing now for several years. But coming in at a seasonally adjusted basis at 147,800 jobs, that is the highest level since June 2021 and put jobs at 2,000 more than they were a year ago. Staffing levels on the railroads were the focus of a recent critical speech delivered to an audience of railroad executives and analysts at the recent RailTrends conference by Surface Transportation Board Chairman Martin Oberman.
- The producer price index in truck transportation now has declined for four consecutive months. The index stood at an all-time high 202.669 in June. In November, it was 193.971, representing a five-month drop of 4.2% while general inflation in the economy remains stubbornly higher.
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