Travel jobs seeing upswing across U.S.

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Last month was a good one if you were looking for a job in the travel industry.

A January Labor Department employment report showed that the travel industry added 11,000 jobs in December, accounting for 15 percent of the country's overall employment gains.

"Looking back at 2013, while the overall economy created fewer new jobs during the past 12 months, the 119,000 jobs created by the travel industry was actually 22,000 more jobs than were added in 2012," said David Huether, senior vice president for economics and research at the U.S. Travel Association. "Since the overall employment recovery began in early 2010, the travel industry has been adding jobs at a 9 percent faster rate than the rest of the economy."

According to Huether, the travel industry has made up 99 percent of the jobs lost during the Great Recession, compared to 87 percent of the rest of the economy, and is 5,000 jobs short of its pre-recession level of employment.

The travel industry is 57,000 short of its record employment level in December of 2000. Huether expects that if the growth in travel employment continues, a new record level of employment could be reached around the middle of the year in 2014.