US Q3 2024 Transportation Labor Market Update: Logistics support emerges as a bright spot

On By Littum

The Indeed Hiring Lab tracks transportation employment trends and analyzes the latest Indeed data. We examine overall labor market trends and dive deeper into job posting trends in various transportation industry categories. Finally, we look at recent trends in labor turnover.

Takeaways:

  • The consistent decline in job postings that began in early 2022 showed signs of leveling off in Q3 2024. As of As of October 18, job postings were 10.8% above pre-pandemic levels.
  • Job posting trends in the broader transport sector are mixed: postings rose in the Logistic Support segment but fell in others.
  • Annual book wage growth for driving roles fell to just 0.5% in September.
  • Pay transparency – measured as the proportion of job postings within a given sector that contain some information about proposed pay – was higher in all transport sectors than the proportion across the overall labor market.

Video of Lab Staffing Senior Economist Daniel Culbertson discusses the US labor market update for Q3 2024, focusing on the transportation sector.

Actual job posting

Despite a 13% decline from a year earlier, the US Indeed Job Posting Index (JPI) remained 10.8% above pre-pandemic levels as of hovering in a narrow range between 10% and 13% above pre-pandemic norms for several months. This suggests that the decline in labor demand over recent years has paused, at least for now, leaving some employers facing a bit less competition when looking to hire.

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The line graph titled “US job postings remain 10.8% above pre-pandemic baseline” shows the change in Indeed job postings since their pre-pandemic baseline through October 18, 2024. US job postings are down 12.9% over the last year.

Transport job posting

The trends in transport job postings go on both sides of the overall labor market trend. Logistic Support is outperforming almost the entire labor market with job postings up 2.2% over the same time last year and nearly 25% over pre-pandemic norms. Meanwhile, job postings for driving and aviation jobs fell by 27.4% and 32.1%, respectively, from the same time a year ago. Despite recent declines, postings in both the driving and aviation categories remain comfortably above pre-pandemic levels (+32.9% and +11.5% respectively).

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Table titled “Logistics Support Posts May Increase” shows job posting trends over the past year through October 18, 2024, as well as the percentage change from the pre-pandemic baseline for several transportation occupations. The number of job postings fell 27.4% over the past year, but remained 32.9% above their pre-pandemic baseline.

Wage increase in transport

While overall wage growth stabilized over the summergrowth across transport-specific sectors continued to slow. At 3.2% year-on-year, posted wage growth in the Loading & Stocking sector in September was broadly in line with the overall labor market average. However, at just 0.5% year-on-year wage growth for drivers was much more modest in September, a marked slowdown from March, when annual driver wage growth was 2.7%.

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Line chart titled “Taking Wage Growth Below Pre-Pandemic Levels” shows year-over-year percentage wage growth for driving and loading and warehousing positions through September 2024. Wage growth in driving positions is up 0.5% year-over-year.

Transport pay transparency

While momentum toward higher levels of pay transparency may have waned, a clear majority (57.8%) of job postings contained salary or wage information in September. In fact, transparency across all transport sectors is higher than the labor market as a whole. Around 60.8% of Loading & Stocking job postings included some salary information in September, as did nearly three-quarters (72.7%) of postings for driving roles. Additionally, 62.3% of logistics support postings included some salary transparency, a big improvement over the small minority (47.2%) of such postings as recently as September 2023.

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Table titled “Dive into Pay Transparency in Driving and Food Preparation and Service Posting” shows pay transparency data for September 2023 and 2024 and the percentage point change over that year for several transportation occupations. In September 2024, Logistic Support and Driving had salary information in 62.3% and 72.7% of job postings, respectively.

For more labor market insights from Indeed Hiring Lab, visit us at hiringlab.org.