Despite employment skyrocketing in the last-mile sector in December, which was a major contributing factor to the overall increase in US transportation employment, the total growth fell short of economist’s expectations.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimated 173,000 new courier and messenger hires in December, but only reported 168,600 new hires in the sector according to their December employment release. The difference between what the BLS expected and what it reported means a loss of 4,400 jobs in the courier sector, but a 13.6 increase in jobs for the US transportation industry on a month-to-month basis.

The nearly 14 percent jump was the second largest seasonal (November-to-December) surge in the last mile sector seen in the last ten years. However, it is still lower than the 174,600 new jobs created in the last mile sector last year, giving further evidence of a slower, but still healthy, holiday retail and shipping season.

While US retail trade and food sales were up by $8.1 billion dollars from October to November 2022, they fell short of 2021’s increase of $16.4 billion dollars during the same period. The 2022 sales, which were just shy of half of 2021’s growth, also failed to meet the expectations of economic experts, turning actual gains into seasonally adjusted declines.

The seasonal adjustment tool is something economists use to better examine long-term trends, but the adjusted numbers don’t reflect real gains or losses in jobs held by workers. If economists tried to represent the seasonal adjustment numbers as real or improved job data, it might make a mess of actual conditions.

The BLS trucking employment report for December is a strong evidence of this. The agency reported a seasonally adjusted 2,100-job month-to-month gain in trucking employment for December, when in reality, the actual unadjusted payroll count showed a 0.5 percent drop in actual jobs.

This indicates that BLS expected the trucking industry to lose 10,100 jobs but received a pleasant surprise when they reported a smaller loss of just 8,000 jobs. Even more surprising for the trucking industry was less job losses in a time where they typically shed jobs after their seasonal delivery peak in November. Since 2012, the trucking industry on average losses 7,340 jobs during the last month of the year. In 2019 they recorded their biggest loss, with a whopping 14,900 jobs.