“...The Trump and Biden Administrations paid $5.8 trillion in COVID relief, equal to roughly a quarter of US GDP, and extended unemployment benefits, in effect paying large parts of the workforce to stay at home. This had the double effect of increasing demand for goods (especially the consumer electronics that the United States imports from China) while decreasing supply.
Lack of labor has worsened some critical bottlenecks, notably including transportation. The American Trucking Associations estimate that the US is short of 60,000 truckers....”
The trucking industry needs to get their collective heads out of their asses and figure out a way to compensate their drivers adequately. The current model for over-the-road truckers is ludicrous and outdated. These drivers are paid by the mile or the load, spend days on the road at a time, and are not paid for the time they are stuck in traffic, shut down for mandatory rest periods, or forced to wait at a customer's location to get unloaded.
The ATA tries to sell politicians and the public on this fiction of a "driver shortage" in order to maintain their stupid business model where drivers basically operate sweatshops on wheels.
There is no such thing as a labor shortage, only a wage shortage.