The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines the Transportation and Warehousing sector (NAICS 48-49) as industries providing transportation of passengers and cargo, warehousing and storage for goods, scenic and sightseeing transportation, and related support activities. The sector employed roughly 6.7 million workers as of mid-2025, about 5% of all private-sector jobs, with warehousing and storage (27%), truck transportation (24%), and couriers and messengers (16%) accounting for two-thirds of that total. Three in four workers in the sector are men, and the median annual wage for transportation and material moving occupations was $42,740 in May 2024, below the $49,500 median for all occupations.
These workers are operating under compounding pressure. The sector lost 78,000 jobs between February and November 2025, with losses concentrated in warehousing, storage, and couriers as freight and e-commerce demand softened. Tariff volatility upended equipment costs and supply chain planning throughout the year; tariffs on trucks assembled in Mexico threatened to add $25,000 to $35,000 to the cost of a single Class 8 tractor. A generational workforce gap is widening simultaneously: baby boomers are leaving trucking at a pace Gen Z workers aren't matching, contributing to a national shortage of roughly 80,000 truck drivers. And transportation and material moving workers remain the occupation group with the most workplace fatalities of any in the U.S.: 1,391 in 2024, a rate of 12.5 per 100,000 FTE workers, nearly four times the national average of 3.3.
Against that backdrop, global Perceptyx benchmark data for employees in transportation job functions reveals a workforce that is proud and committed, yet increasingly attentive to how decisions are made, how change is handled, and whether growth opportunities feel credible. Voice and follow-through present clear opportunities for improvement, and development may determine whether the sector's strong commitment numbers hold through 2026 or plateau as uncertainty persists.
At a headline level, engagement among transportation employees is strong and slightly outperforms the overall benchmark in pride, intrinsic motivation, and advocacy.
Pride stands out in particular. Transportation roles often require coordination under pressure and clear accountability for outcomes. That operational identity appears to translate into strong attachment to the organization.
Advocacy, however, is more muted than pride. While employees feel connected to their work and organization, fewer are actively promoting it. In a labor market where skilled operators and logistics professionals remain in demand, this gap matters. It suggests that commitment is present, but not uniformly amplified. For transportation leaders competing for talent amid a driver shortage and declining employment base, the question is what converts pride into active recommendation. That said, this gap between advocacy and the other components of engagement is not a unique problem for transportation employees. Similar trends have been observed across our industries.
Transportation does not operate in isolation. When compared with other operationally intensive sectors such as Manufacturing and Retail, the patterns in employee experience become clearer.
Manufacturing engagement signals tend to reflect stability. Pride and intent to stay are strong, and employees broadly accept change as part of the environment. However, the primary risk area is whether development pathways keep pace with transformation.
Similarly, engagement in retail organizations is present but more conditional. It is shaped heavily by enablement, staffing levels, and well-being pressures. Manager support also plays an outsized role in sustaining performance.
Transportation shares elements of both. Like Manufacturing, employees expect change and take pride in operational outcomes. Like Retail, execution challenges and frontline voice significantly shape how sustainable that change feels. Engagement remains solid, but perceptions of input, follow through, and career visibility influence whether commitment strengthens or reaches a plateau.
Across sectors, engagement consistently holds when systems, support, and growth opportunities align with daily work realities. When those elements drift apart, resilience becomes harder to sustain.
Transportation employees report strong day to day adaptability, but their perceptions of voice are more mixed.
These numbers point to a tension worth addressing. Employees are close to the operational details that determine efficiency and safety, yet many do not consistently feel involved in shaping decisions that affect their work. When employees don’t believe they have a voice, organizations risk creating environments where the workforce executes change rather than co-creating it. Ensuring that employees feel heard is a core component of both empowerment and engagement, and our research consistently shows that the top driver of engagement for frontline employees is whether they believe their organization genuinely gathers and considers their input.
In a sector where route optimization, automation, and process redesign are reshaping daily workflows, the difference between executing change and co-creating it has direct operational consequences. Frontline employees who feel consulted are more likely to surface the implementation problems that derail technology rollouts.
The 2025 tariff disruptions and ongoing freight downturn mean transportation employees are absorbing concrete disruptions to routes, volumes, and job security. The data suggests these employees are willing to adapt, but execution consistency varies.
Although a majority feel personally supported, fewer believe change is handled effectively at the organizational level. That gap may reflect differences between local team support and enterprise-wide execution.
Engagement also appears to amplify change readiness. Highly engaged transportation employees are roughly 1.1 times more likely than others to say change is handled effectively, and 1.5 times more likely to report clarity around future vision.
The implication for leaders: engaged employees don’t just perform better during stable periods. They also absorb disruption more effectively, which makes engagement a strategic input to change readiness rather than only its byproduct.
Development signals in transportation functions are generally positive, and in some cases stronger than the overall benchmark.
Training satisfaction stands out as a relative strength. This is encouraging in a field where certification, safety training, and technical upskilling are foundational to daily operations. Career opportunity perceptions, however, sit closer to the mid-60% range, leaving room for improvement as automation and AI reshape role expectations.
The engagement gap in perceptions of growth and development is also meaningful. Highly engaged transportation employees are about 1.6 times more likely to see career opportunities and equal opportunities to succeed than their less engaged peers. All of this suggests that when employees see how skill building connects to future roles, change feels like progress. Without that line of sight, each new system or process feels like one more thing to absorb with no clear payoff.
Transportation organizations do not need to convince employees that their work matters. Their pride and commitment are already strong. The opportunity lies in the systems that sustain that belief through periods of disruption.
The transportation sector enters 2026 navigating job losses, tariff uncertainty, a tightening talent pipeline, and the highest workplace fatality rate of any occupation group. For organizations managing that level of disruption, Perceptyx’s Transformation and Change Guidebook offers a research-backed framework for sustaining engagement through large-scale operational shifts. And because safety is foundational to every aspect of transportation work, the Safety Culture Guidebook provides a model for building cultures where employees feel physically, emotionally, and psychologically protected — the baseline condition for every other aspect of the employee experience.
To learn how Perceptyx helps transportation and logistics organizations turn employee listening into operational results, schedule a demo with a member of our team.