The total number of payroll jobs in the for-hire trucking industry fell by 4,000 in February, according to preliminary data from the Department of Labor. That’s the first such month-to-month decline since last April’s massive jobs losses, when some 87,000 trucking jobs were lost in a single month in the worst of the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since April, however, there’s been a steady recovery in trucking employment, marked by several months of strong gains, including a rally from August through November in which 37,000 jobs were added back. Hiring among trucking companies slowed last month, and preliminary data initially showed a dip in trucking employment in January. Revised data now shows employment gains had simply stagnated in January, growing by 800 jobs from December.
