Where Did All the Restaurant Workers Go?

The 83-month-long streak of payroll employment gains appears to have been broken in September. The 33,000-job decline announced Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics could be revised away in coming months, and in any case it's more likely due to two big hurricanes than any economic slowdown. Not much to see here, in other words.

But there is one aspect to the payroll report that I couldn't take my eyes off of. A single sector -- food services and drinking places -- accounted for all the job losses and then some, with payrolls declining by an estimated 104,700 (0.9 percent) in just one month. Which means that all the other sectors put together added 71,700 jobs.

Why would this one sector be so dramatically affected? Are the Houston area (where Hurricane Harvey caused massive flooding at the end of August) and the state of Florida (which Hurricane Irma rolled through on Sept. 10 and 11) especially restaurant-and-bar-heavy economies?1507296808417 No, not really: Food services and drinking places make up only a slightly higher percentage of payroll employment in metropolitan Houston and the state of Florida than in the nation as a whole.