Automation Won’t Eliminate Truckers

Even though U.S. job openings are close to 11 million— including 580,000 openings in transportation, warehousing, and utilities—truckers are worried that new automated vehicle technology will take away their jobs. This potential workforce displacement was the focus of questions in a recent hearing on automated vehicles before the Highway and Transit Subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on automated vehicles. Truckers’ concerns need to be addressed.

America is showing strong job growth and a labor market that meets many definitions of full employment. The Labor Department announced the creation of 467,000 jobs in January, following 510,000 in December, with an unemployment rate of 4 percent. The American Trucking Associations estimates that another 80,000 truckers are needed. The Transportation Department is setting up an apprenticeship program open to drivers aged 18 through 20—who are already allowed to drive commercial trucks in California and Texas.

Supply chains are stymied by lack of transportation workers, and some automation could relieve the constraints—with higher GDP growth that makes everyone better off.

Nevertheless, the February 2 hearing in front of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on “The Road Ahead for Automated Vehicles” showed that a major roadblock appeared to be the effect of automation on jobs.  

Doug Bloch, political director for Joint Council 7 of the Teamsters, asked, “Could workers see their jobs reclassified and their paychecks reduced because half of their job has now been automated away and their employer thinks that it can get away with no longer paying them the full wage they once did?”

Similarly, John Samuelsen, International President of the Transport Workers Union of America, AFL-CIO, said, “The public interest in AVs is in the number of good, union jobs the industry creates in America and the safety benefits the technology ultimately delivers.” The union’s core principles include creating high quality jobs, empowering workers, and protecting the interests of workers. One demand is that a driver must be on all commercial automated vehicles.

Although unions want more federal regulation, individual states are making their own rules. Scott Marler, director of the Iowa Department of Transportation, reported on laws that Iowa has passed to support connected and automated vehicles. Driverless vehicles can already be found on Iowa’s roads.

Connected and automated vehicles can reduce deaths and injuries from crashes. The day before the hearing, the National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration announced that over 31,000 people died on the roads in the first 9 months of 2021, an increase of 20 percent over the same period in 2020, and the greatest number of deaths in that period since 2006. This increase is especially troubling because total fatalities in 2020 were 7 percent higher than in 2019, even though miles driven decreased by 13 percent. Some had thought that 2020 was an anomaly, due to the start of the pandemic, but the trend has continued.

Major factors of crashes in 2020, likely also in 2021, included alcohol, speeding, and lack of seatbelts. Notably, fatalities involving trucks and seniors declined.

Automated vehicles don’t drink alcohol, and they can be programmed not to speed and not to start unless passengers are wearing seatbelts.

Several studies suggest that the loss of truck driver jobs to automation is exaggerated. Bureau of Labor Statistics economists Maury Gittleman and Kristen Monaco wrote a 2020 paper published by the ILR Review entitled “Truck-Driving Jobs: Are They Headed for Rapid Elimination?” They conclude that changes from automation will be gradual and that trucking jobs will survive.

Gittleman and Monaco show that truckers are needed for more than driving, such as freight handling, checking vehicles, inspecting loads, maintaining logs, securing cargo, and operating non-truck equipment. Checks for low tire pressure and unbalanced loads can be automated, but rectifying those problems needs a person. Furthermore, automation may come on the highways, but truckers may still be needed to navigate through cities.

A study by the U.S. Department of Transportation published in 2021 comes to similar conclusions but for different reasons. The authors, Robert Waschik, Catherine Taylor, Daniel Friedman, and Jasmine Boater, suggest that automation in the trucking industry will increase GDP and result in an increase in employment and wages. These changes will result in a higher demand for all workers, including drivers, offsetting losses from automation.

MIT professor David Autor, in a paper published in 2015, asked why, with increasing levels of automation, there are still so many jobs in the economy. One example: with automation, the share of the American workforce employed in agriculture has declined from 41 percent in 1900 to 2 percent today. The major reason for job gains, according to Autor, is that automation is not only a substitute for labor, but a complement. The more automation, the higher the productivity, and the more jobs available.

Despite the pace of automation, in February 2020, before the pandemic, the unemployment rate was 3.5 percent and unemployment rates for Blacks and teens were at record lows. As technology advances, some occupations, such as telegraph operators and lamp lighters, are permanently lost, and other ones, such as computer programmers and social influencers, are born.  Technological change is generally slow-moving, giving people time to retrain and find other positions. Past evidence suggests that the same will happen in trucking.