Transportation and Warehouse Jobs Growing Fast Through 2032

In an article released by Zerohedge, Wanted: The Most In-Demand Jobs Of The Next Decade they have some great news for truck drivers:

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment Projections, transportation and warehousing is going to be among the fastest growing sectors over the next decade, with wage and salary employment in the sector projected to grow 8.6 percent between 2022 and 2032.

As we know, truck drivers will not be replaced by AI anytime soon.

If you've been following Trucking Truth for a while, you know I've said for many years that self-driving trucks are a fantasy that won't happen anytime soon. I've said this for many years. Back in 2017 I wrote an article:

Self Driving Trucks Are Not Coming Anytime Soon

Here we are seven years later and I find no indication that we're any closer than we were back then. It's not happening.

What else could derail trucking?

Well, trucking will not be overtaken by rail, ship, or drone. Trucking serves as a powerful, flexible, and efficient way to move freight and that will not change.

Electric trucks will make progress before self-driving trucks, but this won't hurt truck driver employment at all.

Are Truck Driver Wages Keeping Up?

According to the BLS:

"...driver employment is stable or slightly increasing over time, and it is associated with earnings that are increasing in nominal terms and strong relative to those in other occupations with similar educational requirements."

Why do government people always speak that way? They're saying yes, truck driving wages have remained strong over time and will continue to do so. Here they present a chart of wages that inexplicably ends in 2016, but it's the best I could find right now:

So is there an actual driver shortage?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, truck drivers are in strong demand, but there is no shortage of truck drivers that would be considered problematic.

In the article Is the U.S. labor market for truck drivers broken? the BLS says that trucking wages are consistently stronger than most blue-collar professions:

"...employment in the occupation (trucking) has been resilient, and nominal annual wages have persistently exceeded those of other blue-collar jobs with similar human capital requirements."

My God, the government speak is brutal! In other words, trucking jobs pay better than other blue-collar jobs.

The American Trucking Associations (ATA) has said for decades that we have a driver shortage and we need to do something about it. The BLS responds:

"While we do use ATA data to identify one segment of the trucking labor market (long-distance TL motor freight) that has experienced high and persistent turnover rates for decades, the overall picture is consistent with a market in which labor supply responds to increasing labor demand over time, and a deeper look does not find evidence of a secular shortage. This suggests that, in the aggregate, the labor market for truck drivers works about as well as the labor markets for other blue-collar occupations."

So we do have a strong demand and wage growth for truck drivers, but there is no evidence of a critical shortage that we must address through legislation.

Where Is Trucking Headed?

Truck driving will remain a strong career for the next 10 years and beyond. You can not outsource trucking to another country, replace truck drivers with AI, or move away from trucking to other forms of transportation. Trucking has been a very strong, dependable career for decades and it will remain that way for a long time.

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