Do we have a shortage of truck drivers?
It sure doesn't look like it. And before you ask, the numbers look the same if you break them down by local and long-distance truckers. There are as many at work today as there were in the month before the pandemic started.
Nor do trucking companies seem to want more drivers. Trucker pay had been increasing steadily for years but flattened out in 2021. If companies were desperate for more drivers, we'd see a continuing increase in wages.
None of this means there might not be shortages in specific regions or specific industries. But overall, we seem to have as many people driving trucks today as we did two years ago.
The industry has been claiming a driver shortage going back to before the pandemic so the first chart is not a smoking gun. But yes you won't get more truckers unless you pony up for better pay for a crappy job.
That was my first thought. Who says we had enough before?
On top of which, just because we had enough before, doesn't mean the same number is enough now. Demand for goods is through the roof, and goods have to be transported.
But I can’t get the Chinese made junk I ordered off Amazon. There has to some reason we can blame on democrats.
Silly boy! You don't need "a reason" to blame Democrats!
Kevin this is sloppy. The figures for employees can't be interpreted without information about the number of self-employed contract drivers. And the weekly earnings figures don't tell us anything at all. It would be useful to know the trend in starting wages offered to new recruits, but once again, we can't get a meaningful picture without knowing the employee/contractor ratio.
If there were really a desperate shortage of truckers, wages of non-contract employees would be going up. Also compensation for the contractors would be going up and clearly this has not been happening.
A major problem is that the treatment of labor issues by the MSM is sloppy and biased. Their bread is buttered on the side of employers - they don't get significant advertising revenue from unions and their management is opposed to the production unions in their own companies. Those who do the editing and writing are salaried and not union members. Stories on worker shortages have been dominated by interviews of employers. It is the media which should be providing the statistics to make their points.
Yeah! If we've got to have frequent "stock market reports" foisted on us by the media, I also want just as frequent labor issue reports. Unionized, un-unionized, "gig" -- I want it all, since this is what actual people do. Work. Generally for someone else.
I’m just a truck driver, but there is a glaring assumption in Kevin’s analysis: “ If companies were desperate for more drivers, we'd see a continuing increase in wages.” Not if keeping driver pay down is considered more important to the companies than a small decrease in their delivery capacity.
Econ 101 is bullshit in the US economy on worker pay. Low supply of workers does not immediately result in pay increases.
Again, why is it now okay to say we're at the same absolute number of something as two years ago, and therefore there can't be a shortage? I mean, I seem to remember Kevin Drum being in the habit of plotting trend lines and pointing out when things are below trend. Why would we be all right with the same number of truckers when the economy is growing?
This right here.
Also, there are reasons to believe that the need (demand) for truckers is higher than the trend line right now.
I mean does anybody really believe that we're shipping and ordering around the same amount of stuff as we were in 2019? Beyond just the general march towards "we're ordering more stuff online than ever before, and from non-local places" that's been happening for 2 decades now, there's the whole demand spike thing that's been well documented (or at least alluded to) in basically every breathless article about inflation (as well as the more measured ones), of which there seem to be a dozen every day in major outlets.
So...
You are correct. The pandemic has led to quite a bit of growth in the delivery industry, including names such as Amazon.
While I do not know the requirements for small delivery trucks, I would assume a regular driver's license may only work for some vehicles.
Come on Kevin, if you read about the problems it is contract drivers who get paid by the load. When you have to wait 12 hours for your cargo you are losing money. So you don’t bother with Port business. It is also not just trucks but the chassis you carry. The docks handle that so you generally get screwed. Why bother?
If truckers are waiting 12 hours for their loads, the problem isn't a shortage of truckers.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/11/why-the-us-supply-chain-crisis-is-intractable-and-will-get-worse.html
Someone posted this. It was fascinating.
The unspoken assumption is that there is currently the same amount of goods to be delivered via truck as there was pre covid.
That assumption seems....wrong.
Imagine arguing that there was no shortage of ICU nurses during a covid surge because overall nurse employment was similar to where it was pre covid.
But overall, we seem to have as many people driving trucks today as we did two years ago.
Kevin's right, but that doesn't necessarily mean we don't have at least a modest in scale shortage of truckers. Consumption since 2018 has shifted from services to tangible goods, and the latter need to be shipped. IOW the economy probably needs more truckers working than it did a few years ago, but it apparently it doesn't have them.
Big rigs vs delivery trucks?
Other issues: Freight rail has focused on ROI, so have dropped a lot of shipments onto truckers.
There is no trucker shortage.
There is no brain in this commenter.
Geez, go away.
If there is no trucker shortage, it is amazing. For several years the trucking industry has been vocal about how they will soon have self driving trucks and will need far fewer drivers than they are currently using.
That's a great recruiting line. Become a driver so you can be permanently let go in a few years.
Employers always want to reduce their labor costs and not have to deal with uppity workers. For many of them reducing wages is the easiest or only way to increase profits. But automation is nothing new and not necessarily bad overall - automation has been going on since the start of the industrial revolution and until around 1970 wages increased along with production (GDP). Automation has generally increased production, not reduced the total number of jobs (although hours were reduced until around 1940). Things have been different since around 1970 and it is not because of increased automation.
It was not my intention to cast aspersions on the automation of trucks. I was only pointing out that this might be a bad time to make a career move into driving trucks.
******************OT *********COVID NEWS***********
Now Germany is anticipating an unvaccinated shut down? The case numbers are exploding:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/18/europe/germany-covid-merkel-record-intl/index.html
{snip}
Germany's seven-day incidence rate also hit record levels of 336.9 cases per 100,000 people, up from 249.1 cases reported a week ago, RKI reported.
The definition of 'fully vaccinated' is changing
Germany has one of the lowest vaccination rates in western Europe, with just over 67% of the population fully vaccinated. Around 33% have no protection against the virus, according to the RKI.
This is one of the reasons why infections have soared to record levels, say experts.
''The current pandemic situation in Germany is dramatic, I can't say it any other way," outgoing Chancellor Merkel told mayors from across Germany on Wednesday.
Hospitalizations and deaths remain at a much lower level than in previous peaks, but there is growing concern about gaps in the country's vaccination coverage as it moves into the winter months.
''It would be a disaster to act only when the intensive care its are full, because then it would be too late,'' she added.
{snip}
Cases aren't important?
https://fortune.com/2021/11/16/enochian-biosciences-ceo-predicts-vaccine-resistant-covid-variant-in-2022/
{snip}
Dr. Mark Dybul has some good news and bad news regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. The good news is that advances in therapeutics, vaccines, and the biotech sector will likely help the world avoid a repeat of the catastrophes that 2020 and 2021 brought. The bad news is that we’re likely to see a vaccine-resistant strain of the coronavirus sometime in spring 2022.
{snip}
What is interesting is that the pharma industry has gone silent over waning immunity - and after Pfizer's CEO saying they could develop a variant specific vaccine within 90 days Pfizer has made no effort to do so.
Post infection immunity wanes
Vaccine immunity wanes
And now this guy, along with Faucci are saying we'll have a vaccine evading mutation by spring? New cases mean EVERYTHING in an evolving pandemic.
But this switch to therapeutics is interesting.
In any event the CEO's of major companies are going to be dealing with this for a bit longer. Wave upon wave of employee absenteeism will affect businesses badly. And Delta+ is already affecting working aged and school aged kids.
For those countries that practice ZERO case policy? They're the ones we have to worry about - especially our major trading partner China
Get the shot, get any boosters you can.
I figure with a little luck, drug resistant covid variants will have arrived by the spring of 2023.
Then who gives a shit??? Much like it's brother the "common cold", case counts explode every winter. Case counts mean little.
Case numbers are trash and irrelevant.
Kevin
STOP with this nonsense.
"Some areas of the U.S. federal government are sacrosanct.
The CDC doesn't screw around with reporting COVID information, because millions of people, including scientists, make life or death decisions based on those data.
The Labor Dept. doesn't tweak jobs numbers for political purposes, or to make a president look good or bad, because to report inaccurate results leads to tremendous distrust of the government, messes up markets, and plans of major corporations.
And yet under President Donald Trump the Health and Human Services Dept. altered CDC documents – once considered sacrosanct documents – for political purposes, CNN reported last year
"Amid tension between the administration and the CDC, former Trump campaign official turned chief HHS spokesman Michael Caputo and his team had demanded to see reports out of the CDC before they are released, a senior administration official said. Officials within HHS had defended the demand, saying the CDC fell under the agency's umbrella and that all communications and public documents needed to be cleared at the top."
A federal official told CNN that in addition to reviewing reports, HHS political appointee Paul Alexander has regularly added his input -- often interpreted by CDC officials as political in nature -- to weekly scientific reports intended to track the ongoing coronavirus pandemic response. The development marks the latest example of political interference by administration appointees at the nation's health agencies.
So when The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the federal government "sharply underestimated job gains for most of 2021, including four months this summer in which it missed more job growth than at any other time on record," some expressed concern.
"In the most recent four months with revisions, June through September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported it underestimated job growth by a cumulative 626,000 jobs — that's the largest underestimate of any other comparable period, going back to 1979. If those revisions were themselves a jobs report, they'd be an absolute blockbuster," the Post noted.
They add, "recent revisions have been big enough to turn a substantial slump into a surprising surge."
Americans, in other words, have been living under the false belief that the labor market wasn't exactly hopping, thanks to wildly inaccurate numbers out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agency under the Dept. of Labor that collects, tracks, and analyzes these critical numbers.
Yes, under President Joe Biden the labor market has been surging, we now know, contrary to the information that's been coming out of the BLS.
Curiously, as the Post also noted, the exact opposite happened last year, when Donald Trump was president.
"Revisions in the already calamitous months of March and April 2020," under Trump, "found the economy had lost 922,000 more jobs than initially reported."
Oops.
Given what we know happened at CDC, you'd think some might be wondering what's going on.
Well, we are.
As it turns out, William Beach – the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agency that since the start of the pandemic has been churning out wildly inaccurate (but very pro-Trump) numbers – was appointed by Donald Trump, used to work for a very pro-Trump think tank known as the Heritage Foundation, worked for a university research center that is funded by the very pro-Trump Charles Koch (as in the Koch Bros.), and also used to work for the Republicans on the the Senate Budget Committee.
(And while it's unclear when Beach left Heritage, it's important to know that right wing think tank is a purveyor of climate change denialism, fake critical race theory and voter fraud claims, and voter suppression legislation.)
So, who cares if the labor numbers are wrong?
Well, everyone, when they read headlines calling Biden's jobs numbers a “colossal miss," “ugly," “dismal" and “disappointing," as The Post noted. Companies make major decisions based on these numbers, which everyone realizes are just estimates, but up until last year were good indicators of what is going on.
Under Beach, the Biden administration has been slammed, giving Republicans a false tool to attack. And like bad newspaper articles that appear on page one and linger in Americans' minds for days, corrections only appear on the back pages, invisible to the vast majority of people who only remember what was false.
An important side note: the Bureau of Labor Statistics is also responsible for reporting out the Consumer Price Index, which in recent days has claimed massive price increases.
NCRM emailed Commissioner Beach on Wednesday, asking if he intended to resign, and asking him to explain what caused these massive errors and if that has been fixed.
We also asked if he maintains any professional, personal, or financial ties to The Heritage Foundation, Senate Republicans or any of his previous right wing employers.
Commissioner Beach did not respond, but Bureau of Labor Statistics Deputy Commissioner William J. Wiatrowski did – with a boilerplate explanation of revisions, and a statement assuring us that the "integrity of BLS data collection and reporting is paramount. The BLS commissioner, as has always been the case, does not see data until they are finalized. Civil servant economists and statisticians tabulate and analyze the data."
No word on any resignation – or if this massive problem has been fixed.
There's no evidence to say these massive screw ups are intentional – or worse, politically motivated – but the American public and American businesses deserve better, they deserve factual data they can count on, and they deserve to know what's actually happening on their President's watch – any president.
If that cannot happen under this commissioner, it's time for a new one."
******************************************************************************
Kevin you are basing your stories on very bad, politically influenced numbers from Trump cronies.
Trump's job losses were far worse than expected
COVID was far worse than expected
And Bidens numbers are far BETTER than expected
And inflation stats may be all wrong too !!!
Stop practicing lazy journalism, please
............AND..........to continue along this same vein
That CBO score we're waiting on for the BBB "cost"
CBO is run by a Bush acolyte and trump supporter
Think about this for a second..............
Trump really did eff up the federal government, didn't he? No wonder he's a hero to the Republican Party.
Meanwhile, American journalism doesn't seem up to reporting adequately on this. Trump appointees queer the numbers to make Biden look bad? Biden's fault! Biden fires Trump appointee (for cause)? Partisan revenge! Biden's fault!
Reality may have a liberal bias, but American journalism has a wingnut bias.
I assume Commissioner Beach can't be fired?
Even if there are roughly the same number of truck drivers as before the pandemic, making roughly the same wages, but people are ordering a lot more stuff than they used to, either because their lifestyles have changed or they think prices may rise in the future, then, effectively, there's a shortage.
What if the limiting factor is not number of drivers but number of trucks? Not enough tucks would cause the same symptoms as not enough drivers. And of course nobody would hire drivers for non existent trucks, would they?
I think it would take some time for the fleet to grow sufficiently, especially now as production is slow due to supply chain issues....
Good article about trucker shortage by Dean Baker last week.
It's overblown. Even the shortages look suspect and a scam by the producer class.
A friend runs a logistic brokerage firm. He said 'There are multiple issues right now. The demand for goods is higher than pre Covid. The wait times at ports is much longer than normal. The supply of long hauler drivers is in adequate. Covid restrictions slowed the process some. There are some contract issues. The problems layer on top of each other.'
https://www.americatruckdriving.com/the-9-types-of-truck-driving-jobs/
Right, but demand will be reduced in 2022. Oh, the need for self gratification.