William B. Cassidy, Senior Editor | Jul 06, 2012 10:31AM EDT
The Journal of Commerce Trucking Employment Index edged up one-tenth of a percentage point in June as trucking hiring slowed to a crawl.
The index reading for June was 92.8, compared with 92.7 in May and 90 a year ago, indicating for-hire trucking employment is nearly 8 percent below its 2007 peak.
The index represents change in trucking employment based on monthly payroll data for more than 100,000 for-hire carriers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Employment at carriers tracked by the BLS climbed by 2,000 jobs to about 1,342,700 employees in June, according to preliminary data released Friday.
That’s a 0.2 percent increase from May and a 3.1 percent gain from June 2011.
The Journal of Commerce calculates the seasonally adjusted index by assigning a base value of 100 to average trucking employment in the fourth quarter of 2006.
According to BLS data, trucking employment peaked in early 2007, when the trucking employment index briefly hit readings of 100 to 100.4 for five months.
The index dropped precipitously during the Great Recession of 2009, reaching its low point of 85.3 in March 2010. It has climbed 7.5 points since that month.
That steady climb shows trucking adding jobs over the past two years but still significantly below peak employment levels reached before the recession.
Contact William B. Cassidy at wcassidy@joc.com. Follow him on Twitter at @wbcassidy_joc.