Coronavirus Threatens More Than 15 Million U.S. Hospitality Jobs
Waitresses, hotel housekeepers and casino dealers are among the more than 15 million hospitality jobs in U.S. cities at risk from restrictions being put in place to deal with the spread of Covid-19. This is based on a Bloomberg News analysis of the latest available U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data through May 2018 covering 40 occupations critical to America’s hospitality and gaming industries.
Restaurant, Hotel and Casino Jobs Face Virus Risk
Hospitality workers as a share of each metro area's workforce (circles sized by total hospitality jobs)
Note: Limited to cities with at least 20,000 hospitality workers.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
As of Friday morning, at least 23 states have closed bars or restaurants, around 20 have prohibited gatherings of more than 50 people, and several have begun implementing curfews and shuttering non-essential businesses. The most extreme measures have occurred in California where a shelter-in-place directive was announced by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday. The order requires 40 million California residents to remain at home except for essential activities or jobs. In addition to critical government and healthcare roles, cafes and restaurants are allowed to stay open but only for take-out or delivery, which has already led to mass layoffs.
Nowhere are there more threatened jobs than in the New York metro area, where one million people work in hospitality. This includes 157,000 waiters and waitresses, 40,000 bartenders and 8,500 hotel desk clerks. On Friday morning, Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered all non-essential workers to remain at home for the foreseeable future. The Los Angeles area has the second-most such workers—around 800,000—including 22,000 people who work at amusement parks and recreation facilities. This represents between 11% to 13% of these cities’ respective workforces in recent years.
Most Hospitality Jobs
There are 4.6 million hospitality workers in the top 10 city clusters
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
The pain of an extensive and prolonged coronavirus-related shutdown will be especially felt in the nation’s tourism hotspots. Roughly one in four workers in beach destinations like Kahului, on the island of Maui in Hawaii, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina are employed in the hospitality sector. The same goes for gambling towns like Atlantic City and Las Vegas, where the governor of Nevada recently announced a 30-day shutdown of all casinos.
Most Reliant on Hospitality Sector
The hospitality industry matters most in beach and gambling destinations
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
All but five of the 40 occupations in this analysis fall into broad categories that were less likely than the workforce overall to work from home on average in 2018, according to the BLS American Time Use Survey. Additionally, 17 of the roles, including restaurant waitstaff and table game dealers, require at least arm’s-length contact with others, based on physical proximity scores compiled by the O*NET database of occupational information. At a time when most major cities are urging residents to stay at home and practice social distancing, few jobs are more at risk than these.