The travel industry is still struggling to recoup the jobs lost during the pandemic. Despite a bounce back in travel, the industry's unemployment numbers remain high.
According to data from the U.S. Travel Association, the leisure and hospitality industry gained 331,000 jobs in April-outperforming the overall U.S. jobs increase of 266,000 and offsetting job losses in other sectors.
The travel industry's unemployment rate continues to decline. In January, it hovered at 15.9 percent and declined to 13 percent in March and, in April, it sits at 10.8 percent. However, this is significantly worse than overall U.S. unemployment, which is reported to be around six percent.
Despite the gains in recent months, 17 percent of Leisure & Hospitality jobs have been lost (and not yet recovered), the U.S. Travel Association reports. The leisure and hospitality sector also accounts for 35 percent of all U.S. jobs still lost since February of last year.
One area of the industry that is hindering the recovery is the ongoing loss of international visitors and business travelers.
"Leisure and hospitality is significantly outperforming overall job creation even though travel in the U.S. is only operating at just over half strength," said U.S. Travel Association executive vice president for public affairs and policy Tori Emerson Barnes. "International travel and business travel accounted for 41 percent of all travel spending in 2019, but those two segments remain virtually halted.
"This disappointing jobs report would have been significantly worse without leisure and hospitality," added Barnes. "We're missing a huge opportunity to restore jobs by not prioritizing the reopening of two key segments of the travel industry."
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