Over 7% of Workers Are In Transportation and Material Moving Occupations

Transportation and material moving occupations had employment of 10.2 million in May 2018, representing 7.1 percent of total national employment, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. How many of these jobs will automation kill?

The largest transportation and material moving occupation was laborers and hand freight, stock, and material movers (2.9 million) and the highest paying transportation and material moving occupation was airline pilots, copilots, and flight engineers ($169,560).

The annual mean wage across all transportation and material moving occupations was $38,290, compared with the U.S. average wage of $51,960.

We\'re about to experience a revolution in automation, and no sector of the economy will be more greatly impacted than transportation.

Think about it: self-driving technologies could replace drivers of everything from Uber/Lyft to truck driving and delivery -- this change could happen over a remarkably short period of time.

With material handling work, we\'re already seeing the first wave of fully automated warehousing and fulfillment operations.