Truck transportation jobs in April rose by an amount that has not been seen for a long time.
The jobs total of 1,496,600 jobs was 4,300 more than in March
To find a one-month gain of more than 4,300 jobs in truck transportation, you need to go back to September 2023, when the BLS reported a jobs gain in that sector of 6,000 jobs. But that number carried something of an asterisk: it came after a job reduction of 32,700 jobs a month earlier on the back of Yellow Corp. closing. So the big increase the next month could have been driven in part by some of those laid off Yellow truck transportation workers finding other employment.
To find a one-month increase as large as the 4,300 increase from April without an extraneous one-time factor, you’d need to go back to October 2022, when the great post-pandemic freight market was slowing. The truck transportation sector added 6,400 jobs that month, one month after losing 6,100 jobs. It’s been mostly down arrows recently April’s increase was even more notable because it is a much higher number in what has been a stretch of mostly lower figures.