Trucking employment and wages: Where are we headed?

Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provides an insightful snapshot of the current state of trucking employment and compensation. While overall job levels remain relatively stable, sector-specific trends and accelerating wages point to deeper dynamics at play in the freight labor market.

At the outset, it’s important to recognize that the threat of tariffs clearly distorted activity in many sectors to the upside. Therefore, trends over the past six months or so are not necessarily indicative of the path forward.

🚚Employment: Top-line stability masks sector-level divergence

For-hire trucking employment declined slightly in May 2025, with a net loss of 900 payroll jobs. However, upward revisions data from prior months more than offset the short-term drop. Compared to May 2024, total payroll employment in the sector is up just 0.2%, and relative to the pre-pandemic benchmark of February 2020, employment has grown 0.6%.

More granular figures lag the total figures by a month. The recent firming of trucking employment – six months from November through April – shows significant disparities across different trucking segments:

• Local specialized trucking saw the largest gain, adding 7,800 jobs from November to April.
• General freight truckload added 2,400 jobs in the same period.
• General freight LTL declined by 1,900 jobs.
• Local general freight fell by 3,400 jobs.
• Used household & office goods moving added 900 jobs.
• Long-distance specialized trucking shed 200 jobs

These numbers suggest that while the headline employment figure is flat, there’s ongoing reshuffling beneath the surface. Some aspects of the specialized sector have added significant jobs in the past six months, but general freight ranges from merely modest growth as with truckload to retrenchment as with like LTL and local freight are retrenching. However, employment levels do not tell the whole story.

💰Wages: Record highs in several sectors

Wages are rising more decisively than employment, and in some cases, it is happening in sectors where employment levels have been weak. In April, average weekly earnings across the for-hire trucking sector reached new record highs. Compared to a year ago, weekly earnings increased 4.2%, based on preliminary BLS data.

Notable wage highlights include:

• General freight LTL wages surged 5.3% month-over-month – the largest monthly increase on record. FTR suspects this gain will be downgraded in further updates, but that remains to be seen, of course.
• Local general freight wages rose 2.8% to a record level.
• Local specialized trucking earnings increased 1.3%, also hitting a record.

The local general freight sector is especially interesting as it had the sharpest drop in employment over the past six months but with wages that are now at an all-time high. This is not a contraction. What it implies is that that the drop in employment may have been driven more by labor availability than lack of demand.

We generally would equate rising wages with pressure to hire, so watch local general freight and LTL. Local specialized trucking already has seen strong growth and is paying record wages, which could mean even more pressure to hire.

While rising wages typically indicate improving utilization and stronger labor demand, the April figures may be partially distorted. Early-year tariff avoidance activity, which may have artificially boosted earnings, particularly in the LTL segment. These gains could be subject to revision in future datasets.

🛣️The road ahead

In isolation, the latest employment and wage data – rising wages with constrained employment levels – suggests a truck freight market in the early stages of a recovery, which would, of course, be good news for carriers and a worrisome sign for shippers that have become accustomed to a soft market. However, the context is critical. Q1 freight activity in several areas clearly was distorted to the upside by shippers’ moves to minimize the impact of future tariffs. Therefore, we cannot be confident that stronger freight metrics are sustainable until the economy has clearly entered a period of tariff impact. For a variety of reasons, that really has not happened yet. Stay tuned.

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