Talk to people in the leisure and hospitality industry, and they’ll tell you the shrinking population of young people is not the only reason for the on-going worker shortages. An abrupt decrease in immigration is another.
People in the leisure and hospitality industry should know. In no other industry is the worker shortage as acute.
The leisure and hospitality industry is a massive collection of industries. It consists of two subsectors, one being arts, entertainment and recreation; the other, accommodation and food service. Arts, entertainment and recreation includes performing arts, spectator sports, museums, zoos, fitness centers and golf courses. Accommodation and food service includes hotels, restaurants, bars and a plethora of the like.
Prior to the pandemic, leisure and hospitality ranked third among the nation’s leading private sector employers (behind professional and business services, and education and health services). It employed 17 million people, 10.7 percent of employed U.S. workers. Accommodation and food services employed 14.5 million; arts, entertainment and recreation, 2.5 million.
In Glynn, leisure and hospitality is a monster industry, far and away the county’s leading employer. Just before the pandemic, leisure and hospitality employed about 8,500 Glynn workers, 22 percent of the county’s employed workers. Accommodation and food services employed about 7,350; arts, entertainment and recreation employed about 1,150.
The pandemic hit leisure and hospitality harder than any other industry. Nationally, the industry’s recovery from the pandemic has been impressive, but not complete. U.S. leisure and hospitality employment currently stands at 15.5 million, 1.5 million below its pre-pandemic level.
In Glynn, leisure and hospitality’s recovery has been impressive and probably complete. The most recent industry employment figure for Glynn is 8,243 for the third quarter of 2021. But tourism here has been roaring for months. A current employment figure below 8,500 would be surprising.
Lurking beneath those numbers is a detail that explains why the worker shortage in leisure and hospitality is so acute. Leisure and hospitality relies heavily on two sets of workers: young workers and immigrants.
The median age of a worker in the U.S. is 42.2 years. The median age of a leisure and hospitality worker in the U.S. is 31.7 years. In the U.S., 12 percent of employed workers are age 16 to 24 years. In leisure and hospitality, 35 percent of employed workers are age 16 to 24 years.
The problem? Between 2010 and 2019, the population of 16 to 24 years olds in the U.S. shrunk by 843,029. The population under age 16 shrunk by 876,772.
In the U.S., 17 percent of employed workers are immigrants. In leisure and hospitality, the figure is 20 percent. In accommodation, it’s 32 percent.
The problem? Between 2000 and 2017, the U.S. foreign-born population increased by an average of 743,000 per year. Between 2017 and 2019, the average increase fell to 203,000 per year. With the pandemic, the U.S. foreign-born population appears to have decreased (though official figures for 2020 and 2021 are not yet available).
To the point, the abrupt shift in immigration in 2018 and 2019 from the 2000-2017 trend cost the U.S. about 1.1 million workers, half of whom would have been college educated.
Would an additional 1.1 million workers solve our current worker shortage problem? No. But it would take a nice chunk out of it.
The new trend in immigration is old news to people in the leisure and hospitality industry, especially hoteliers. The industry has been lobbying hard for immigration reform since 2018.
How’s that for a predicament? The population of young workers can’t be unshrunk. And immigration reform requires serious people in politics.
Look for leisure and hospitality to become the leading employer of robotics engineers.
Reg Murphy Center