Dive Brief:
- Leisure and hospitality sector employment continued its upward trend in May, adding approximately 48,000 jobs in the month, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday.
- Over the past 12 months, leisure and hospitality added an average of 20,000 jobs per month, according to BLS. In May, of the 48,000 added jobs, the majority (30,000) were in food services and drinking establishments.
- The hotel industry was down 600,000 jobs coming out of the pandemic, a figure that has now shrunk to approximately 200,000 — “still quite significant,” American Hotel & Lodging Association President and CEO Rosanna Maietta said onstage at last week’s NYU International Hospitality Investment Forum.
Dive Insight:
Earlier this year, AHLA — citing data from Oxford Economics and STR — said that the U.S. hotel industry would add 14,000 jobs in 2025 but that staffing levels would remain “well below” 2019 levels.
Speaking on a panel at NYU IHIF last Tuesday, Maietta said the hotel labor shortage is “very regional.”
“It depends on the business and where you are in the country where you’re starting to see that pinch,” she said. “There's this misperception that we don't have good paying jobs, and that is absolutely not true,” she added, noting that the industry has increased wages by an average of 15%.
PM Hotel Group CEO Joseph Bojanowksi confirmed the “really large” wage increases.
“Our experience is that [hotel wage growth] is moderating now,” he said on the panel. “It's moderating at a significantly higher level, but we're back into a historical norm in terms of [3 to 5] percent increases year over year.”
Hotels paid a record $125.79 billion in wages, salaries and other compensation in 2024, according to AHLA’s 2025 State of the Industry Report.
Hotels offering higher wages still say they are short staffed, according to a survey conducted by AHLA and Hireology, published in February. Meanwhile, the leisure and hospitality sector has the second-highest rate of attrition (4.28%) out of 14 sectors examined by ADP, according to data released last month by the payroll company.
To combat labor shortages, AHLA has advocated for an expansion of the H-2B seasonal guest worker program.
The overall U.S. unemployment rate of 4.2% held steady in May, per BLS.
