Employment Soars in Warehouses

For the month of August, warehouses and gig drivers like couriers have seen a surge of employment.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics report released Friday, overlooking August data, the areas of warehouses, storage, and couriers and messengers rose by more than 20,000 jobs from July each. This can be compared to the overall gain of just 235,000 jobs in the U.S, and the jobs gained with the previous categories’ accounts for a net 17.1% of all jobs gained in August.

This increase in warehouse and storage jobs is the largest since the end of 2020, still recovering from the massive loss of over 100,000 jobs in April 2020 as the pandemic began. By the tail end of 2020, the warehouse sector had about 90,000 more jobs than when the pandemic hit nationwide and saw monthly growth of about 68,000 jobs.

This has all been a gain over the months of June to August of this year. The gain of over 20,000 jobs in the couriers and messengers is the largest increase since January of 2019, according to BLS data from 2011. This large leap in courier jobs may be due to the industry getting ready for the holidays shopping season.

Trucking has gained 5,400 jobs, building on July and June, and slowly creeping back up to where they were in 2019. Naturally, this does come with its own challenges because the industry demands far more drivers than it has been getting, particularly in the last year.

Data is also showing that more and more drivers are being more regional, local drivers than over the road drivers, and these numbers are stubbornly slow when growing. There is growth, and those numbers are finally rising, however.

Source: freightwaves.com