Labour Market Information

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One of Trucking HR Canada's top strategic priorities is to help meet the industry's HR challenges by providing relevant, accurate, and accessible labour market information (LMI).

What is LMI?

Labour market information (LMI) is actionable intelligence pertaining to the supply and demand of labour. It puts raw data into context and facilitates better decisions by employers, workers, job seekers, policymakers, educators, career practitioners, academics, students, parents, and more.

LMI at Trucking HR Canada not only includes publicly available sources, including Statistics Canada’s census and labour force surveys, but also qualitative and quantitative research directly from employers to fill in the gaps that are lacking.

 

LMI Resources

Interesting Facts

Trucking and logistics keep the Canadian economy moving.

Trucking and logistics keep the Canadian economy moving.

The trucking sector plays a significant economic role in national and international supply chains. The industry represents 4.5 per cent of Canada’s GDP, employs close to one million workers, and enables and supports the economic success of numerous key sectors including forestry, construction, mining, agriculture, manufacturing, and more.

However, with the recent onset of COVID-19 and its repercussions across the global and domestic economies, the trucking and logistics sector’s labour market has shifted from a situation of labour shortages to unemployment. Through an in-depth look at the economic impacts of COVID-19 on the sector and updated labour projections confirmed that the truck driver shortages will materialize again, once the economy picks-up its pace. Trucking HR Canada’s new labour market initiative delivers comprehensive labour market information that will support employers in managing current and future workforce challenges.

Impacts of COVID-19:

  • It is estimated that employment in the trucking and logistics sector will contract by 10.4%, or 72,000 jobs, due to COVID-19, from 695,000 workers in the fourth quarter of 2019 to 623,000 workers in the second quarter of 2020.
  • Projections suggest that roughly 30,900 of the 72,000 total jobs losses, or 43%, will materialize in the truck transportation industry. Another 18,600 jobs, or 26%, will be lost in the combined retail and wholesale trade industries. Other sectors that we expect will experience significant declines in trucking and logistics workers because of COVID-19 include manufacturing (5,200 workers), and warehousing and storage (5,100 workers).
  • We expect that trucking and logistics employment will stabilize by the first quarter of 2022 and remain roughly 1% below pre-COVID levels through 2023.
  • Vacancies: Labour shortages that the trucking and logistics sector was experiencing before COVID-19 should moderate in the near-term. However, as labour demand recovers, vacancies within the sector will eventually return, especially among truck drivers.

Demographics

  1. Age

    The truck driver workforce is considerably older than the overall Canadian workforce. The occupation’s large boomer cohort is one reason why, as 31% of truck drivers are aged 55 or older compared to the national average of 22%. At the same time, younger workers represent a very small share of the truck driver workforce, compared to the national average. Only 3.4% of truck drivers are under 25 years of age, compared to 12.7% across all industries.

  2. Women In Trucking

    Women are heavily underrepresented in the truck driver occupation, making up only 3.5% of truck drivers in Canada, compared to 16% in trucking and logistics and 48% across all industries.

  3. Indigenous & Visible Minorities

    While visible minorities and Indigenous peoples are represented proportionally to the overall Canadian labour market, immigrants are slightly overrepresented among truck drivers where they make up 27% of employment, compared to 24% across all industries.

We update our LMI regularly and encourage you to subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed.

This project is funded in part by the Government of Canada's Sectoral Initiatives Program (SIP)