Last week was a good week for the travel industry in Washington, D.C.: The federal government has reported increases in both travel exports and travel employment, according to the U.S. Travel Association.
First up, the U.S. Department of Commerce, which reported on Friday that travel exports rebounded in January after a fourth-quarter slowdown, increasing by $296 million from December to $12.9 billion in January. Furthermore, it indicated, travel exports outpaced exports of petroleum and agriculture products, resulting in the first improvement since August in the trade surplus in travel, which reached $3.4 billion even though the overall monthly trade deficit in goods and services worsened for a third consecutive month to negative $52.6 billion.
Also on Friday, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that the number of workers employed directly in the travel industry increased by 8,000 to 7.6 million in February, with the most significant increases taking place in the restaurant, lodging and amusement/gambling/recreation industries. It marks the 11th employment increase in the past 12 months for the travel industry.
"Since February 2011, travel employment has increased by 129,000," said U.S. Travel Association Senior Vice President of Economics and Research David Huether. "And since the employment recovery began, the travel industry has created more than 250,000 new jobs, accounting for more than 7 percent of overall job growth since early 2010. This is primarily due to the fact that the pace of job creation in the travel industry has exceeded that of the rest of the economy by 34 percent. As a result of this faster job growth, the travel industry has now recovered more than half of the 496,000 jobs lost during the great recession, while the rest of the economy has made up just 39 percent."