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Travel Industry - Employee Count
Key Takeaways
- In 2019, domestic and local travelers supported about 15.8 million direct and indirect jobs in the U.S.
- In 2021, the U.S. leisure and hospitality industry had over 15.69 million employees.
- In 2021, there were 609,581 full-time employees attached with different airlines in the U.S.
Introduction
After an exhaustive search, data on the number of travel professionals in the U.S. travel industry is largely unavailable and can not be triangulated. According to the U.S. Travel Association (UTA), domestic and local travelers in the U.S. supported about 15.8 million direct and indirect jobs in 2019. Below are data points that could be helpful and relevant to providing an insight into the employment of professionals in the U.S. travel industry.
Helpful Findings
Travel, Leisure & Hospitality Industry
- According to a 2020 report by the U.S. Travel Association (UTA) which provided 2019 statistics of the industry, the travel industry had 9 million jobs directly supported by domestic and international travelers.
- The report also hinted that another 6.8 million jobs were indirectly supported or induced by domestic and international travelers.
- This implies that about 15.8 million jobs were supported by travels in the U.S. in 2019.
- The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that in 2021, the U.S. leisure and hospitality industry had over 15.69 million employees.
Air Line Employment
- According to the U.S. Bureau of Transport Statistics (BTS), there were 609,581 full-time employees attached with different airlines in the U.S. in 2021.
Research Strategy
To determine the size of the U.S. professional travel employment market, we scoured through government sources, associations, media publications, and third-party statistical databases such as BLS, BTS, UTA, Statista, Tourism Economics, and many more. However, these sources only provided data on the total employee count in the industry. We tried to find a breakdown based on sectors to enable us to derive data specific to professionals such as destination marketing organizations, corporate management in attractions, airlines, and others but no report on a breakdown is publicly available. Further triangulation efforts were made towards finding individual employee counts from different sectors in the travel industry which brought about data on the number of employees in the airline service sector. We intended to deduct the number of local hotel employees and the number of travel agents from the total employees in the travel, hospitality, and leisure industry to provide a rough estimate of professionals in the market. However, while we found the number of agents in the industry, determining the number of local hotel employees was not possible. Available reports on the hospitality industry cover both local hotel employees and employees in the leisure industry. As such, we could not determine the specific number of employees that are local hotel workers from professionals in the sector.