Labor and employment law firm Littler Mendelson released its annual Labor Day Report. Produced by Littler’s Workplace Policy Institute, the report shines a light on the state of the labor market and employment trends amid the pandemic, with some notable information for hoteliers.
Jobs across the country declined 1.4 million in March 2020, and then 20.8 million the next month—the largest drop ever recorded. By July 2021, the economy had regained most of this loss, but the jobs level remained about 4.3 percent short of the February 2020 prepandemic benchmark and does not take into consideration the growth of the civilian labor force in the interim. These figures also do not include workers who remained on payrolls but experienced wage losses because of reduced hours and lost sales commissions or tips. These losses also omit the lost work and earnings of self-employed small business owners, contractors, craft trades workers, professional services providers (lawyers, dentists, etc.) and independent service providers.
Leisure and Hospitality
Within the service sector, the leisure and hospitality industry was the most heavily affected by job losses and continues to lag in recovery. The number of jobs fell 49.3 percent by April 2020 and only improved to a decrease of 25.5 percent the following July. A year later, in July 2021, jobs in the sector remained at a 10 percent deficit, and the industry still needs to fill almost 1.7 million jobs to reach the February 2020 prepandemic benchmark.
The “vast majority” of those receiving unemployment benefits were those in the retail and hospitality industries.
Franchise Employment
Franchise sector employment has steadily increased more rapidly than employment overall over the past 10 years. In February 2020, before the pandemic onset, franchise employment had reached a record of 10.1 million jobs—7.8 percent of private sector, nonfarm payroll employment.
The initial impact of the pandemic saw franchise employment fall by 227,100 payroll jobs, but because nonfranchise private employment fell relatively more, the franchise share of total employment actually rose to 9 percent.
Franchise employment reached a low point of 8.1 million in July 2020, but has recovered steadily most months since. In May 2021, franchise employment surpassed the February 2020 benchmark of 10.1 million. By July 2021, employment in the franchise sector had exceeded 10.3 million, with franchise workers accounting for 8.4 percent of all nonfarm private payroll employees.