WASHINGTON, DC
The latest Labor Department report, on January 2012 employment numbers, shows a very emboldening fact: the travel industry is outpacing other sectors when it comes to growth.
"Posting its thirteenth gain in the past 14 months, the travel industry added 7,000 jobs in January 2012,” according to David Huether, senior vice president of economics and research at the U.S. Travel Association. “That means 7,540,000 U.S. workers are directly employed by travel, and these jobs cannot be outsourced.”
He continued, "Since the employment recovery began in March of 2010, travel industry employment has expanded by 223,000, marking a 3.1 percent increase; meaning the industry is growing faster than the 2.4 percent rise in employment in other sectors of the economy. As a result, the travel industry has already made up for 45 percent of the job losses that took place during the recession. By comparison, the job gains in rest of the economy to-date have offset just 35 percent of the job losses during the recession."
And this growth points up another important hiring trend, Huether noted.
“The travel industry employs a larger share of workers with less than a college degree than other sectors of the economy,” he said. “The quicker employment recovery in the travel industry has helped the unemployment rates for those with less than a college degree come down faster over the past year than those with a college degree.”
