The percent of women as student drivers and trainees in the transportation industry shrank in recent years, according to a 2024 survey from The National Transportation Institute.
Women represented around 10.7% of student drivers and trainees this year, even though that percentage exceeded 15% in 2022, NTI found.
“I have to admit I was disheartened — but not surprised — to see a regression in the strides we’d made in recruiting younger people and women into trucking jobs from 2019 to 2022,” NTI President and CEO Leah Shaver said in a LinkedIn post.
The recent survey meant representation for women as student drivers and trainees fell to 2019 levels, which were 10.1% of that developing workforce.
Similarly, the percent of young people in this training area is also back to people in their 30s again, as opposed to 2022 when younger people were more prevalent, Shaver said.
Women represented around 8% of drivers the trucking workforce from 2020 through 2022, per Bureau of Labor Statistics data. But that dropped to less than 7% in 2023, a fallback toward 2019 levels.
The Women In Trucking Index released this year showed the percent of women truck drivers declined to 9.5% — a drop from approximately 12.1% in 2023.
The regression in the number of women drivers comes as fleets have pulled back on recruitment efforts in general amid a prolonged freight downturn, Shaver said.
In the broader data point of truck transportation, the percent of women was nearly 13% in 2019, federal data shows. That fell to 12.4% in 2020, rose to 12.6% the following year, increased to 12.8% in 2022, and fell below 12% in 2023.
The American Transportation Research Institute noted one of its top priorities in 2023 was identifying barriers to entry for women truck drivers, putting a focus on research efforts that included a June 2024 report about identifying and mitigating challenges faced by women truck drivers.