The American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA) says that 500,000 of the sector’s workers still will be unemployed when this year ends.
According to AHLA projections, states hit hardest by the loss of hotel jobs through this year are:
- California, losing 67,169 jobs;
- Florida, out 39,560 jobs;
- New York, with 38,028 lodging workers idle;
- Nevada, missing 22,282 jobs;
- Hawaii, with 20,029 jobs lost.
AHLA and UNITE HERE, the country’s largest hotel workers’ union, are urging Congress to pass the recently-introduced Save Hotel Jobs Act, which would provide up to three months’ payroll subsidies to hotels, motels, and inns.
Leisure and hospitality remain 3.1 million jobs short of its 2019 payroll, the AHLA said in a statement urging support for the bill before Congress, with the lodging industry’s unemployment rate 330 percent higher than the labor market overall.
For every ten workers employed directly, a hotel typically sustains 26 indirect jobs in restaurants, supply firms, maintenance and construction companies, and similar businesses, the AHLA said.
If Washington does not give them money, AHLA says it will close out this year with 500,000 of its workers still jobless.
TREND FORECAST: While leisure travelers are beginning to return, hotels count on business travelers for much of their profits. In the new Zoom world, as we have forecast, business travel will not hit pre-COVID War levels as businesses have announced permanent cuts to their travel budgets.
In addition, tourism, another hotel-reliant sector, will not return to pre-COVID War levels for at least another year.