Happy professional truck driver driving his truck and looking at camera. Copy space.
In April, the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.2%, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday. An alternative measure of unemployment, which includes discouraged employees, is 4.4%. Employment continued to trend up in transportation and warehousing.
Preliminary estimates for April show Transportation and Warehousing adding 29,000 jobs. Thus, logistics was responsible for over 16% of the total gain in nonfarm payroll employment, which increased by 177,000. The unemployment rate in logistics is 3.3%. The average weekly hours in the industry, including overtime, are 38.7.
While warehousing is rapidly automating based on mobile warehouse robotics, the gains in productivity associated with mobile robots have not yet affected the industry’s low unemployment rate.
Gains in automation based on self-driving trucks are negligible, although on Thursday, Aurora Innovation, Inc. (NASDAQ: AUR) announced it had successfully launched its commercial self-driving trucking service on the Dallas/Houston lane. This marks the beginning of the self-driving freight revolution. Although, this revolution is expected to roll out slowly.
Within logistics, warehousing and storage added 9,800 jobs, and couriers and messengers were responsible for 8,400 new jobs. All modes of transportation added jobs except for water transportation. But in the critical truck transportation mode, just 1,400 jobs were added in April, representing less than 0.1% of the 11.5 million truck transportation jobs.
The railroad industry put hiring on pause, too, adding just 100 seasonally adjusted jobs from March to April and bringing its total employment to 153,800 in April.
The average hourly earnings in the industry are $31.39, which is an annual income of roughly $61,000. However, the average salary for the industry is somewhat misleading because truck drivers make significantly more than workers employed in warehousing.
Gains in Warehousing
Logistics experts attribute the gains in warehousing and storage to importers pulling freight forward to avoid the Trump administration’s tariffs.
When asked whether any trade agreements were coming this week, Trump told reporters on Sunday, “It could very well be this week.” He didn’t specify which countries.
“We’re negotiating with many countries, but at the end of this, I’ll set my own deals — because I set the deal, they don’t set the deal,” Trump said aboard Air Force One. “You keep asking the same question: ‘When will you agree?’ It’s up to me, it’s not up to them.”
Trump also signaled that his aides are having conversations with counterparts from China. Financial markets have steadied amid signs that trade tensions between China and the US could ratchet down from current levels.
China has been the focus of Trump’s tariff campaign, leading Beijing to retaliate against US levies. Chinese tariffs now run as high as 145% on Chinese goods. China has been hinting at a possible thaw recently, while Trump told NBC News in comments broadcast Sunday that he’s willing to lower US tariffs at some point.
The employment statistics are based on two monthly surveys. The household survey measures labor force status, including unemployment, by demographic characteristics. The establishment survey measures nonfarm employment, hours, and earnings by industry.
