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Trucking jobs fell 2.5% in February
By Avery Vise
Continuing a string of unprecedented percentage decreases, the trucking industry lost 33,400 employees on a seasonal basis in February -- a 2.5 percent drop from January, according to preliminary figures released March 6 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The 33,400 trucking jobs lost in February represent 5.1 percent of the net 651,000 nonfarm payroll jobs lost. And the rate of decline in trucking employment in February far exceeds that of the 0.5 percent employment decline in the overall economy.
Trucking employment was down 1.8 percent in January, 1.3 percent in December and just less than 1 percent in November. Each decline was the highest recorded monthly percentage drop at the time except for April 1994 during a Teamsters strike. Since October, trucking employment is down 6.4 percent.
Trucking employment is down 11.8 percent from its peak of 1.45 million in January 2007, according to BLS figures.
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