In a headline-grabbing downward revision of total employment numbers posted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the figure for the Transportation and Warehousing subsector moved higher.
In its annual update on the model the BLS uses as the basis for its monthly employment report, the agency said the model that ran through March 2025 was likely to have overstated total employment in the U.S. by 911,000 jobs. Of those, 880,000 were in the private sector.
However, the revision for Transportation and Warehousing–which includes the key Truck Transportation and Warehouse sectors–was estimated to be up 6,600 jobs.
That is only a 0.1% difference from what is in the current model. Two other sectors–Government and Private Education & Health Services–also had a 0.1% revision, with both going down that much while Transportation and Warehousing went up.
The percentage changes for every other sector were larger than those three, with Information seeing a 2.3% reduction in estimated total employment. That was the largest percentage change. .
The overall decline of 911,000 jobs was a decline of 0.6% from the underlying model.
No impact on monthly report until February
The numbers released by the BLS, which come out every year in either August or September, will have no impact on the monthly employment report until February 6. That is the date that the January employment report will be released, and its numbers will be based in part on revisions of the model that would include the data released Tuesday.
It’s the second year in a row that Transportation & Warehousing’s base number was projected to increase. Last year, in a year where the total base number dropped by 818,000 jobs, the Transportation & Warehousing sector base number rose 56,400, up 0.9%.
In the most recent employment report released Friday, the BLS reported 6,747,700 jobs in the Transportation & Warehousing sector. A year earlier it was 6,663,000 jobs.
Those figures are not the base number in the model. That number is not disclosed.
Subsector information not released
The Transportation & Warehouse sector, besides truck transportation and warehousing & storage, also includes air transportation, rail transportation, water transportation, transit and ground passenger transportation, pipeline transportation, scenic and sightseeing transportation, support activities for transportation, and couriers and messengers.
The annual update of the base model numbers does not break out those subsectors.
The most recent employment report put warehousing & storage jobs at 1,829,800 jobs, the highest in the sector. Truck transportation was 1,523,000 jobs, second-most in the sector.
Aaron Terrazas, an independent economist who formerly was with Convoy, said the minor change in the transportation baseline might mask the fact that various sectors that the industry serves are struggling and will have an impact on such industries as trucking and rail.
“While the Transportation sector saw minor upward revisions, the sectors of the economy that drive transportation demand saw sharply negative employment revision — as the ongoing freight slump would indicate, aggregate demand economy-wide is struggling,” Terrazas said in an email to FreightWaves. “The revisions we received today are only the first wave of revisions we’ll eventually get — accounting for survey non-response bias, but not for shifting seasonal patterns.”
As to what the numbers say on a broader macro basis, Terrazas noted that the report comes just a few days after the report on August employment that showed a job gain of just 22,000, well under expectations.
“On top of major downward revisions to the most recent data reported last Friday, we now know that the labor market was already sputtering late last year and earlier this year,” he said. “This is not just a post-tariff summer slump — it looks like something much bigger, and effectively seals the deal on a big rate cut when the Federal Reserve Board meets next week.”
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