Trucking Grabbed Laid-Off Workers in Past Recessions: Will it This Time?

Apr 29, 2020 at 08:54 AM CST
Consider what happened during two recent downturns. From the start of the Great Recession in December 2007 to the employment trough, truck transportation employment fell by 13 percent, but residential construction employment fell by close to 40 percent, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Then, from mid-2014 when oil and gas extraction jobs peaked to the trough three years later, trucking jobs increased by 2 percent while oil and gas jobs fell by almost 30 percent. BLS data on truck transportation employment do not include owner-operators, which would make these trends appear even sharper.

Apr 29, 2020 at 08:54 AM CST

Consider what happened during two recent downturns. From the start of the Great Recession in December 2007 to the employment trough, truck transportation employment fell by 13 percent, but residential construction employment fell by close to 40 percent, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Then, from mid-2014 when oil and gas extraction jobs peaked to the trough three years later, trucking jobs increased by 2 percent while oil and gas jobs fell by almost 30 percent. BLS data on truck transportation employment do not include owner-operators, which would make these trends appear even sharper.