- Four million US hotel industry jobs could be eliminated in the coming weeks as hotels experience unprecedented booking cancellations due to the coronavirus, according to the American Hotel & Lodging Association.
- Hotels employ a variety of workers, such as concierges, housekeepers, accountants, and event planners.
- The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides data on wages and employment in the hotel industry.
- Servers earn a median of $23,100 a year, while housekeeping cleaners earn a median of $23,310 a year.
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Nearly four million US hotel industry jobs could be eliminated in the coming weeks, according to the American Hotel & Lodging Association. It comes as hotels across the country experience unprecedented booking cancellations due to the coronavirus.
Marriott, the largest hotel company in the world, has already begun furloughing tens of thousands of employees amid global hotel closings, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Hotels employ a wide variety of workers, and salaries range from well below the median wage to very high paying, so some workers will be better poised than others to handle layoffs.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment Statistics program offers data on employment and wages across different occupations and industries, including the traveler accommodation industry.
Hotel jobs tend to be lower paying than average. The median annual wage for an employee in the traveler accommodation industry was just $32,420, below the overall median wage of $38,640, in 2018 (the most recent data). Housekeepers, for example, earned just $23,310 per year in 2018.
Here are all the occupations for which at least 4% of hotel-industry establishments reported having employees, ranked from lowest to highest wage, along with their median annual pay and the number of people in that job: