It seems that the Transportation, Logistics and Delivery (TLD) market has been caught off-guard by the labor shortage, and is now struggling to fill the demand for supply chain and logistics professionals. Employers are scrambling to fill jobs and facing an unprecedented shortage of qualified workers amid low unemployment rates, a rapidly aging workforce in trucking and warehousing, a need for a new type of employee who is more tech savvy, and mounting customer expectations for faster delivery of goods (sellers like Amazon and their Prime service have driven delivery window expectations through the roof).
Trucking executives say their industry is experiencing a “perfect storm”— the strong economy is creating a heavy demand for trucks, but it’s difficult to find drivers with unemployment so low, and potential candidates ignoring job openings because they fear self-driving trucks will eventually replace them.
According to a report from CBRE (the international industrial real estate firm), rapid growth of e-commerce will create demand for an additional 452,000 warehouse and distribution workers in 2018-19, which will make matters worse in this labor-strapped industry.
The warehousing operations of the future are expected to undergo a transformation; they are more likely to resemble light industrial manufacturing operations vs. traditional warehouses. This will require the warehousing workforce to become more skilled and expand past their more traditional roles of picking and packing inventory for shipment.