Travel booking jobs ticked back up again in August, with the sector adding 1,000 jobs over the previous month, according to the latest Jobs Report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Year over year, however, travel booking jobs were still down by 1,500 jobs.
For the leisure and hospitality sector as a whole, that area added 17,000 jobs in August. Year over year it was up as well, by 253,000 jobs.
The slight uptick in travel booking jobs follows a summer in which they had been down, by 500 jobs in June, and relatively flat in May. Before that, however, the sector had posted a four-month run of job gains that started in December as the travel industry began to recover from the impact of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Leisure and hospitality jobs have also been steadily climbing during the same period.
Looking ahead, signs point to a slight slowdown in growth for the travel industry ahead. According to the latest Portrait of American Travelers study from MMGY Global, the overall number of trips travelers take is set to decline. Spending on individual getaways is set to grow as customers take longer trips, however, leading to a flat spending picture overall.
Overall, the economy added 201,000 jobs in August, with the unemployment rate remaining mostly unchanged at 3.9 percent. Notable job gains occurred in professional and business services, health care, wholesale trade, transportation and warehousing, and mining.
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