The federal government's latest economic data revealed disappointing news for the U.S. economy. One bright spot, however, was the travel industry, which added jobs at a rate faster than the rest of the economy and increased exports while the rest of the economy decreased them.
Travel Industry Jobs
According to the U.S. Department of Labor's most recent jobs report, released last week, the U.S. economy added 96,000 jobs in August — 7 percent of them from the U.S. travel industry.
"The U.S. travel industry continues to spur our nation's economic recovery by putting Americans back to work, adding 7,000 new jobs in August," said U.S. Travle Association Senior Vice President of Economics and Research David Huether. "Not only did these jobs contribute to lowering the unemployment rate to 8.1 percent, but this also marks the ninth consecutive month of positive growth in travel employment. Total travel industry employment now stands at 7.6 million, the highest level since November 2008."
According to Huether, the travel industry has created jobs nearly 30 percent faster than the rest of the economy over the past 30 months and has made up 59 percent of the jobs that were lost during the Great Recession. "By comparison, the rest of the economy has only recovered 45 percent of the jobs lost between December 2007 and February 2010," Huether continued. "Since the employment recovery began in March of 2010, the travel industry has added 291,000 jobs and accounted for 8 percent of the total jobs created to-date."
Travel Industry Exports
Results were equally positive in the area of exports. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce's latest report, released yesterday, overall U.S. exports of goods and services fell by $1.9 billion in July. Travel exports, however, increased.
"Offsetting some of the declines in other areas, travel exports edged up in July by $30 million to a level of $13.7 billion," Huether said. "While the July increase in travel exports was not as large as the $130 million increase in June, the travel industry continues to make positive headway in export growth this year. Through the first seven months of the year, travel exports have risen by 9 percent compared to the first seven months of 2011, much faster than the 5.3 percent rise in other exports of goods and services."
The travel industry has been responsible for 12 percent of the U.S. economy's overall export gain so far in 2012 compared to 2011 — close to double the travel industry's contribution to export growth at the same time last year. "Bucking the overall trend of a widening trade deficit that expanded to -$329.7 billion through the first seven months of this year, the travel industry's trade surplus expanded five of the seven months so far in 2012 to $3.8 billion in July, the largest travel trade surplus since last October," Huether concluded.