Arkansas has highest percentage of trucking industry workers

Arkansas has the highest percentage of private sector employees who work in the trucking industry, according to the American Trucking Trends 2018 report. The report showed one in 12 people, or 3.1%, of the 1.004 million people who work in non-government jobs are employed by the trucking industry.

The American Transportation Research Institute, a nonprofit research organization of American Trucking Associations, recently released the report showing that in 2017, more than 7.6 million people in the United States worked in trucking-related jobs across all sectors of the economy. Arkansas has a total of 30,700 trucking employees.

Previously, Nebraska had the highest percentage of private sector employees working in the trucking industry. In 2017, trucking industry workers in North Dakota and Nebraska accounted for 2.9% of private sector employees. Texas and California had the highest number of people working in the industry, with 130,127 and 111,692, respectively.

“Trucking not only delivers necessities like food, clothing, medication and gas to Arkansas communities, this industry delivers jobs from the Delta to the Ozarks and everywhere in between,” said Shannon Newton, president of the Arkansas Trucking Association. “This data proves that trucking plays a vital role in the state’s economy and in the lives of so many Arkansans.”

ATRI compiles statistics annually for the report on employment demographics, revenue, safety, efficiency and the role of the trucking industry in the economy using data from the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages Annual Averages, Economics Statistics Group and the American Trucking Associations.