Andrew Yang on labor: what the evidence says · JRE #1245
“there are three and a half million truck drivers in this country right now. It's the most common job in 29 states. And the average trucker is a 49-year-old guy”
What the evidence says
The 'truck driver is the most common job in about 29 states' claim traces to a viral 2015 NPR/Planet Money map built from BLS occupational employment data. NPR's own analysis explains that truck driving's dominance on the map stems from several factors together: the job's relative immunity to globalization and automation compared to manufacturing work, declining regional specialization, and, notably, how the government classifies occupations. BLS lumps all truck drivers and delivery workers into one large category, while comparable jobs like teachers are split into narrower categories (e.g., primary vs. secondary school teachers), which inflates trucking's apparent rank relative to occupations counted more finely. So while the state count itself comes from real BLS data, NPR's own framing shows the 'most common job' framing is partly a data-classification artifact rather than a clean apples-to-apples comparison, making the claim technically sourced but misleading as stated. The separate figures Yang cites, about 3.5 million truck drivers and an average age around 49, are broadly consistent with published BLS/industry estimates.