Description: Job Market Practice Talk Levi Soborowicz (Iowa State University)

Location: 368A Heady Hall

Title: Occupational switching for truck drivers and related professions

Abstract:  In 2021 the American Trucking Association claimed the driver shortage reached about 80,000 drivers and predicted a shortage of 160,000 drivers by 2030. The perceived driver shortage is a major concern of both policymakers and firms. The 2021 Infrastructure bill authorized a trial program to allow 18–20-year-olds to drive commercial vehicles. In this paper, I use a Discrete Choice Mixed Logit model to estimate the impact of wage increases, education cost reductions, and the impact of opening truck driving to 18–20-year-olds on the share of truck driving employment in the blue-collar labor market. I use a control function approach to deal with endogeneity in wages and training costs. I use four data sets, the Survey of Consumer Finance March Supplement (ASEC), for individual and market share data. State-specific occupational wage data was sourced from the Occupational Employment Wage Survey (OEWS), Work setting variables were sourced from O*Net, and educational costs from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). Results show that higher wages, reduced training costs, and including 18-20-year-olds increase the number of truck drivers. The largest potential increases come from adding 18–20-year-olds into the market, increasing trucking employment by about 70,000 new drivers nationally.