[kennywinker]

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/05/25/999784202/is-t...

> And according to the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, state governments issue more than 450,000 new commercial driver's licenses every year. A large fraction of those drivers enter the long-haul trucking industry.

> "It's just simple math," Spencer says. "If every year there are an excess of over 400,000 brand-new drivers created, how could there possibly be a shortage?"

> In a 2019 study published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, economists Stephen V. Burks and Kristen Monaco investigated claims by industry leaders that the trucking labor market was somehow "broken" enough to create a decades-long shortage. Standard economics says if you don't have enough workers, you raise wages and within a reasonable amount of time, presto, no more shortage. Is trucking somehow different? A thorough investigation led them to conclude that the trucking labor market is not different. It is not broken. Yes, they say, the trucking labor market is "tight" — meaning that companies are competing to fill open jobs — but it functions in the same way as any other labor market.

[inetknght]

I'm not sure but there might be a correlation to the fact that millions of babies are born every year but we somehow aren't seeing population growth to match...

Where there's an entrance there's also an exit.

If there's 400,000 new commercial driver's licenses every year then how many existing commercial driver's licenses expire / die / move to a different job / whatever?

[kennywinker]

The article I linked to talked about retention being the major issue in the trucking labour market - Which only re-enforces the grandparent's (yyy888sss) point - the issue is with the pay-to-work match, not some pipeline issue. In fact, the pipeline is probably so good that it prevents the industry from needing to solve the retention issue. If there are always fresh truckers to burn out, there's no need to pay better.

[doikor]

> If there's 400,000 new commercial driver's licenses every year then how many existing commercial driver's licenses expire / die / move to a different job / whatever?

I don't know how the licenses work in US but here in Finland a lot of people have truck drivers licenses and the permits to do it commercially (2 different things here) but do not actually work in trucking in the traditional sense.

For example got a friend who has those as he works construction as a crane operator. He needs the licenses/permits to be able to move his crane which is classified as a truck when driving on the roads to move it from site to site. Another one works in selling earth/dirt. He needs the licenses to drive his own truck to move stuff around the quarry (required as it is not fenced and gated off from public roads). Also loads his loader on the truck to move it between the sites he owns as needed.

Also a lot of people go into the field for a year or two and quit as it is hard work with long/bad hours and thus miss out on family life etc.