Where Have The Men Gone?

A worrying trend is developing in the U.S. labor market for trucking companies: the men are disappearing. We believe this will add upward pressure to driver wages and benefits as fleets compete for a shrinking pool of male drivers.

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on the labor participation rate of men and women (defined as the percentage of men and women actively working or seeking work) clearly illustrates the problematic trend.

Key Observations

• Male participation in the workforce has dropped steadily over the last 30 years from 75.4% in 1995 to 67.6% today, a total of 7.8 percentage points.
• Over the same period, female participation dropped only 1.3 percentage points, from 58.8% to 57.5%.
• For perspective, male participation rates were at over 86% in 1948, when the BLS first began recording the data.
• There was a steep drop during the pandemic for both men and women, but more women have come back to work than men since then.
• Our advice to driver recruiters: focus your recruitment efforts on women - the candidate pool is growing.