Employment in ground transportation business grew showing solid growth

Shuttle services, vanpools and similar businesses employed 17,719 people in 2012, an increase of 51 from rise from 11,696 in 2007, according to the first 2012 Economic Census industry series statistics released Monday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

These businesses (part of the All Other Transit and Ground Passenger Transportation industry) also reported $1,144 billion in sales in 2012, an increase of nearly 51 percent since 2007.

These statistics are the first from the industry series, which publishes national statistics for detailed industries, including the number of employees and establishments, payroll and total revenues. It also includes detailed statistics on the product lines sold or services provided by businesses, derived from the twice-a-decade economic census. The economic census provides data on employer businesses of privately held and publicly traded firms in an industry. For information on government-owned transit and ground passenger transportation businesses, see the Census of Governments.

Other highlights from this data release on transit and ground passenger transportation include:

• Taxi service industry employment totaled 33,721; it had one of the highest increases in payroll per employee within the larger transit and ground passenger transportation industry − an increase of about 17 percent from $18,126 in 2007 to $21,165 in 2012. 
• Private local, fixed-route passenger transportation by road and transit rail (i.e., buses and rails) generated sales of $13.3 billion in 2012. Local fixed-route passenger transportation includes road and rail transportation on a prescribed route running at set times throughout the day and confined to a single metro area.
• Total employment from school and employee bus transportation businesses increased by 26,589 since 2007 (nearly 13 percent), while payroll per employee decreased by about 4 percent over the same period.

Also released Monday were industry series finance sector statistics for monetary authorities - central bank as well as data for securities and commodities exchanges. Securities and commodities exchanges employed 6,378 people with more than $1.2 billion in annual payroll in 2012 and reported $9.6 billion in total revenue in 2012.

Continuing through February 2015, future industry series releases will include information on the emerging industries of solar, wind, geothermal and biomass electric power generation never before available from the economic census. For more information on these future releases, see business.census.gov.

The economic census is conducted every five years and provides a comprehensive and detailed profile of the U.S. economy, covering millions of businesses representing more than 1,000 industries and providing unique portraits of American industries and local communities.

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