According to an analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data conducted by finance experts at Wealth of Geeks, the leisure and hospitality sector currently holds more than 1.4 million job openings. This makes it the segment with the third-highest number of job openings, behind only education and health services and the professional and business services industry.
Our Analysis: The Travel Industry Needs to Attract and Retain New Professionals
With a wealth of leisure and hospitality jobs unfilled, the travel industry needs to attract new blood to operate at its best. As we saw during the pandemic and in the years since, understaffing leads to a huge variety of service issues, from back-end support for travel advisors all the way to the customer experience — and, in many ways, the industry is still working to fully recover.
Unrelated to the pandemic, however, the tourism sector also suffers from a lack of awareness about the myriad career paths it offers. Not only does the travel industry need to create more high-quality career opportunities, but it also needs to better promote those paths to a wider pool of professionals.
Fast Facts: Job Openings Abound Across the U.S. in a Variety of Industries
- The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data reveals that there were a total of 9.6 million job openings across all industries in the U.S. as of September 2023. This is a decrease from the 10.8 million openings recorded in September 2022, but an increase from August of this year, which saw a total of 9.5 million openings.
- Education and health services has the most unfilled jobs, at 1.9 million.
- Coming in second is the professional and business services industry, with 1.6 million job openings.
- After the leisure and hospitality industry in third, the next highest job openings are recorded in trade, transportation and utilities (1.4 million); government (983,000); financial activities (647,000); and others.
