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D.C. hospitality jobs grow in number, importance
September 13, 2012
When the disappointing national monthly employment report for August was released last Friday morning, one statistic regarding the few new jobs created popped out. More than one-third of the meager 96,000 hires nationwide originated in the hospitality industry.
The importance of hospitality sector job creation in the District is as critical to the local economy as it has consistently proven to be across the country.
In the most recent 12-month U.S. Labor Department reporting period, nearly half of all new jobs created in the Washington region originated with restaurants, bars and hotels. According to regional economic analysts, hospitality businesses will remain a predominant generator of new jobs throughout the metropolitan area in coming years.
This will prove true whether federal government downsizing continues under a President Obama or a President Romney. Of course, this assumes that the feared local economic impact of the looming federal budget sequestration is avoided by alternate deficit reduction planning.
Already a primary source of D.C. jobs and both local revenues and taxes, it is projected that the hospitality sector will likely become the single largest employer in the nation’s capital in the near term. In addition, the outsized overall financial contribution to the local economy and the city’s tax base exceeds the magnitude of the industry.
D.C. hospitality employment – including food and beverage enterprises, hotels and entertainment and arts businesses – currently comprises approximately 100,000 of the nearly 490,000 private sector jobs located in the city. Almost half of those hospitality related workers reside in the District. By comparison, less than a third of the 736,000 total jobs in D.C. employ city residents – including all federal and local public sector employment.
Those numbers don’t include employment in associated businesses and services dependent on hospitality sector activity for both providing a customer base and generating income.
