CNN Money is reporting that wages for truck drivers grew by 7.8% last month when compared to the same time last year.
According to CNN, this is the biggest jump among 60 common professions analyzed by Glassdoor.com, a job-search website. It’s also far better than the 2.8% overall wage growth for all jobs.
“We have a booming economy, we’re seven years into the expansion and truck drivers are the front line,” Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at Glassdoor is quoted as saying.
A press release from Glassdoor said that while truck drivers median base pay grew 7.8 percent at the national level, in Los Angeles it was even higher at 9.3%.
The pay increases are certainly necessary to attract more truck drivers to the industry, since a new report by by the American Trucking Associations (ATA) says that there will be a shortage of nearly 50,000 truckers in the United States by the end of this year.
That’s up from a shortage of 30,000 drivers just two years ago, and 20,000 drivers a decade ago.
The task of moving goods around American cities cannot be outsourced to another country.
Businesses need truck drivers to move goods around nationally. Truck driver pay increases are necessary if younger drivers are going to be attracted to a field where the physical demands of the job can be grueling, especially for long haul drivers.