Economy-wide breakdown
- The fourth quarter of 2024 fueled hopes for strong labor market growth in the new year. While October’s jobs report fell significantly below expectations due to the impact of Hurricane Milton, November and December exceeded forecasts. Over the past three months the job market has grown at a respectable average of 170,000 jobs—an encouraging sign given the backdrop of still-high interest rates.
- While overall job growth remains steady, the labor market is a far cry from the peaks in the early 2020s, which led to the “Great Resignation”. Now, fewer workers are quitting their jobs, leading to fewer backfill openings and ultimately driving down the hiring rate. Despite this slowdown in quitting and hiring, layoffs have not risen significantly, creating a relatively stable environment for those currently employed.
- For workers with jobs, this means consistent wage growth and a moderate selection of open positions to explore. However, the picture is less optimistic for unemployed workers. The labor market has become increasingly challenging, with the job-finding rate—the percentage of unemployed workers securing jobs each month—declining steadily over the past six months.
- As we look ahead to 2025, steady labor market growth is expected to continue. However, policy uncertainty under a new administration will be a critical factor in shaping the trajectory of the labor market. Decisions on fiscal and monetary policy, as well as regulatory changes, could significantly influence hiring, wages, and overall economic momentum in the year ahead.
Read our economy-wide breakdown of the latest numbers.
Employment Trends
Throughout 2023 and 2024, the transportation and warehousing sectors experienced a hiring slowdown as consumer demand shifted from goods to services. Many consumer goods brands, which had struggled to fulfill orders during the 2020 supply chain crisis, found themselves with overstocked warehouses over the past two years due to slumping sales.
The Cass Freight Index, which tracks monthly shipping volumes, highlights this trend, showing a decline of more than 14% since its peak in October 2022.
As we look ahead to the new year, our focus shifts to consumer spending trends and the potential effects of new tariffs introduced by the incoming administration.
Throughout 2023, the transportation and warehousing sector faced job losses driven by the whiplash of shifting consumer demand. Early 2024 offered a glimmer of hope with several months of solid job growth, but that momentum faded by fall. Where does that leave us now? In December, the industry managed to add just 9,600 jobs, following a month of virtually no change. Looking ahead, 2024 is likely to bring more of the same: uneven growth patterns oscillating between gains and losses as new policies begin to take effect.
Employment trends in the transportation and warehousing sector reveal a mixed picture, with some subsectors expanding while others shrink. The transit and ground passenger sector has seen significant momentum, growing at a nearly 6% annual rate. Similarly, warehousing and storage is making a slow but steady return to growth, increasing by 0.2% over the past year and continuing its positive trajectory.
On the other hand, air transportation has been steadily cooling, now growing at a modest 1.4% annual rate, a sharp contrast to the much higher growth seen two years ago. Meanwhile, truck transportation—which delivers for so many other industries—has been in decline for several months, contracting at a 0.4% annual rate.
Wage Trends
Wages for transportation and warehousing workers are starting to cool as hiring demand subsides. Air transportation workers, who saw their wages surge by over 10% during the pandemic, experienced a more modest 4% annual increase this year. Similarly, wages for warehousing and storage workers have risen by 4.2%, reflecting a similar slowdown in growth.
Truck transportation workers have seen steady wage gains of around 3%, maintaining a consistent rate throughout the year. However, workers in transit and ground transportation have experienced a notable decline, with wages contracting by -1.7%, following a surge of more than 15% during the pandemic.
Openings and Turnover Trends
The volume of job openings has dropped significantly over the past two years, with the openings rate falling from a peak of 7% in late 2021 to 3.3% by the end of 2023. This decline is partly driven by shifting consumer habits and evolving worker behaviors, including decreased voluntary separations. Notably, far fewer workers are quitting their jobs, with the quits rate now at 2.3%, below pre-pandemic levels.
This reduced mobility in the labor market has also suppressed the hiring rate, which has declined to 4.3%. Meanwhile, layoffs, though still relatively rare, have been edging upward and are now near 1.7%.
Recruitment Marketing Trends
The term “long” or “ATS apply” refers to the conventional application process, requiring applicants to manually submit their tailored application documents and personal details through the company’s website or an applicant tracking system (ATS). In many cases, applicants are required to create a company-specific account.
On the other hand, “easy apply” refers to a swift application process on a job board, often conducted through a smartphone. With a single click, essential information like the resume is transmitted directly to the company. Due to the simplicity of this application method, easy-apply metrics are not directly comparable to those of the “long” or ATS apply. The metrics are therefore presented separately.
Long Apply
Recruiting costs, influenced by the balance of labor market demand and supply, have been trending downward as the pool of job seekers has grown and apply rates have increased. The median cost-per-click remains steady below $1, a level that has held for over a year. Similarly, the median cost-per-application has declined gradually, now reaching a low of under $11.
This reduction is largely driven by higher application completion rates, with 8.2% of job seekers now finishing their applications after clicking—an encouraging sign of increased engagement and efficiency in the hiring process.
Easy Apply
Recruiting costs for easy-apply methods have remained remarkably stable. Cost-per-clicks (CPCs) are slightly lower, averaging $0.78, while cost-per-applications (CPAs) hover just above $2.50. This efficiency is driven by high engagement, with nearly one in three job seekers completing an application—highlighting the effectiveness of streamlined application processes in attracting and converting candidates.
Recruitment Marketing Forecast
Using Appcast’s weekly historical CPA data, Recruitonomics has created a two-quarter forecast of median cost-per-application for the transportation and warehousing sector. Given the mostly neutral short-term outlook for the industry, our forecasts predict that CPAs will slightly decline but will remain in the $7-$10 range for the foreseeable future.
What does this mean for Transportation and Warehousing?
For recruiters, the transportation and warehousing sector presents a mixed and evolving landscape. The hiring slowdown observed in 2023 and 2024 reflected shifting consumer demand and overstocked warehouses, with uneven job growth and cooling wages across subsectors like air and truck transportation, while transit and warehousing show signs of recovery. Job openings have halved over two years, with reduced worker mobility and rising layoffs, contributing to lower recruiting costs.
Traditional application methods and easy apply both demonstrate cost efficiencies, with record-low CPAs, driven by higher application completion rates. Looking ahead, recruiters can expect stable costs and modest CPA declines, requiring adaptability to shifting trends and the impacts of policy changes.
Forecasting Methodology
Cost-per-application (CPA) is forecasted two quarters ahead using the previous two years’ worth of one-month moving average data. A combination of ARIMA, exponential smoothing, and seasonal naïve models are used to create an ensemble forecast. The forecast provides both the 95th percentile confidence intervals, indicating the likelihood that each value will be within the CPA range provided.
