Job Seekers Adapt and Excel in Tight Labor Market

Carrin Hayes left her position as a special needs teacher in Denver, Colorado, six months ago to work as a truck driver.

Hayes remarked, “Teachers are underpaid and underappreciated, and people look at me like I’m insane. I actually make more money when I have a certificate. I’m also less stressed.

Hayes is one of many black laborers who are benefiting from a surge in the transportation industry brought on by the pandemic. The only black-owned truck driving school in the US, Carter Truck Driving Academy, is where she received her training. It was established in 2021 to cater to the rising number of black inhabitants looking to change jobs.

A growing number of black people are “trading up” from service employment in quest of higher earnings and better working conditions, moving into the transportation industry as well as other industries including warehousing, construction, and professional services.

According to Julia Pollak, chief economist for the employment website ZipRecruiter, “the number of black women who became truck drivers [during the past year] alone and meaningfully raised their income was huge.”

They experienced the fastest salary gain last year of any racial group thanks to the shift. According to figures from the labor department, the median black worker received a wage raise of 11.3% last year, compared to a 7.4% increase for all workers.

In the US, black employees hold low-wage jobs at disproportionally high percentages in retail establishments, eateries, motels, and theme parks. But a lot of people are leaving service industries in favor of better-paying positions in sectors like transportation, which economists think will permanently reduce the income gap between races.

According to data from the labor department, one in five black workers in 2019 were employed in the leisure and hospitality sector, which paid an average of $20.77 per hour in December. On the other hand, truck drivers made an average salary of $29.54 and more than twice as many had access to retirement benefits. For drivers in its own fleet, Walmart advertises beginning pay of up to $110,000.

In the first half of 2022, more black workers entered the transportation and utilities supersector than any other industry grouping monitored by the labor department, according to a study by the White House Council of Economic Advisers. In the first half of 2022, about 11% of black workers were working in the industry, up 1.5 percentage points from the same period in 2019.

Even before the pandemic caused a labor crisis, transportation and utility companies were in serious need of expanding their workforces due to an aging workforce and high retirement rates. Early pandemic supply chain snarls made them even worse.

According to Laron Evans, president of the American Association of Blacks in Energy, the racial awakening that occurred in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020 spurred many of these predominately white corporations to engage with communities of color for the first time.

“Traditionally, thinking back 10 to 15 years, when I first started in industry, I did not see a large share of under-represented groups within the industry,” said Evans, who is also a director for engineering consultancy Burns & McDonnell, based in Kansas City and which counsels utility providers across the nation.

Evans continued, “But you have seen an upsurge in the last few years.” “I believe 2020 was a catalyst that increased momentum,” the speaker said.

Like many other businesses that witnessed an increase in the proportion of black workers in 2022, the transportation sector frequently does not require college degrees, making it an easy transfer for individuals wishing to leave the service sector. For employees wishing to enter the field for the first time, many firms have started to subsidize credential programs.

The Diversity Equality & Inclusion Strategy Manager at Burns & McDonnell noted, “We can’t just rely on traditional channels to locate talent. In order to broaden its own talent pool, Burns & McDonnell collaborates with historically black colleges and funds STEM programs in nearby high schools.

According to the labor department, black people made up 19.7% of the 2.3 million truck transportation workers in the US last year, an increase of 1.2 percentage points from 2019.

According to a study by economists at the University of Chicago and Duke, full-time black workers have earned around 20% less than their white counterparts during the 1970s, despite the gap narrowing between the shares of black and white Americans with college degrees.

In 2019, black workers did profit from historically low unemployment, but that development was undone in 2020 when the COVID-19 crisis resulted in the loss of millions of leisure and hospitality jobs. Black employees experienced a peak unemployment rate of 16.8% in May 2020, two percentage points higher and one month later than the general jobless rate. The black unemployment rate fell to 5.4% in January, the lowest level since the epidemic began, but it was still significantly higher than the national rate of 3.4%.

The situation hasn’t been as awful as it was, but Patrick Mason, an economics professor at Florida State University, pointed out that things had previously been far worse. “Therefore I’m concerned that wages, especially for the least educated, aren’t keeping up with the rate of inflation.”

According to Pollak, trucking jobs were particularly vulnerable to changes in the economy. One of just three industries, the transportation and utilities sector, is laying off workers at a higher pace than it was before the pandemic as businesses get ready for a slump in the economy.

According to Pollak, “it can be a very erratic industry where income is not stable and heavily dependent on economic situations.” I’m concerned that some of the workers that enter that industry are currently having trouble.

The former teacher turned trucker from Colorado, Hayes, claimed that the industry was still debating how to be more inclusive of black workers. According to the state’s department of motor vehicles, 91% of commercial driver’s license holders in Colorado who self-reported their race are white.

For individuals of color in particular, “this is a really terrifying industry,” said Hayes.

But after you get beyond that obstacle, you can have individuals knocking on your door and asking you to work with them because they heard you have a CDL.

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