(The following story by John D. Boyd appeared on The Journal of Commerce website on January 25, 2010.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Class I railroad workforce shrank again in December, the Surface Transportation Board said, bringing the number of jobs at the largest freight carriers to yet another low in the STB records.
The mild decrease of 372 jobs overall left employment for U.S. operations of major railroads at 146,725 as of mid-month, according to reports the seven Class I carriers file with the STB.
The only time Class I rail jobs grew in recent months was in July, when tighter work-hour rules took effect and traffic was growing. Since then, even with traffic continuing a pattern of mild gains, railroads have broadly kept on trimming their labor force.
The latest month reflects some mixed hiring choices. Norfolk Southern Railway, Kansas City Southern and the U.S. lines of Canadian National Railway added jobs from mid-November to mid-December. But that was more than offset by cuts at Union Pacific Railroad – the industry’s largest employer – plus BNSF Railway, CSX Transportation and the U.S. units of Canadian Pacific Railway.
The STB’s reports date back to 1967, and the recession of the past two years has seen an agency-created employment index for Class I lines sink to record lows. For both November and December the STB says its job index was down to 24.1 percent of the 1967 average. A year ago it was 26.4 percent, and it was up to 27.5 percent in May 2007.
During 2009, those seven largest railroads shed 14,464 jobs that they report to the STB. However, some carriers include reduced-hour workers in those totals, as they have tried to keep some seasoned employees on limited-work job banks until business picks up enough to rehire them full time. So the reduction in full-time jobs has been even greater than the total employment levels reported to the STB.
In the latest month, the railroads added some train crew jobs – engineers and conductors – along with equipment maintenance workers. But they cut other types of transportation jobs, track and structural maintenance staff and some administrative staff.