Due to personal schedules and airfares, our family happened to spend a long weekend in New York City, then the rest of the week in Las Vegas. Being tourists in both cities, staying in various hotels, and eating at a lot of restaurants, got us to wondering about how many jobs the hospitality industry accounts for in each city. And how do both stack up against Orlando, Chicago, L.A., Washington, D.C., etc.?
According to our research, Las Vegas places ninth out of the top tourism cities in the country for number of workers employed in the hospitality and leisure industry at slightly less than 300,000.
The New York metropolitan statistical area, which includes parts of New Jersey and Long Island, has the most, at right around one million, followed by L.A. at around 600,000, Chicago at around 500,000, then Dallas, Washington, Houston, and Miami between 450,000 and 350,000, with Las Vegas, Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco right around 300,000. Orlando is pretty close to those at around 260,000.
Interestingly, though, in terms of the percentage of the total work force, Las Vegas is far and away number one in the nation, with nearly 33% of all area workers employed in the hospitality and leisure industry. Orlando, as you might expect, is second at around 23%, then Anaheim (home of Disneyland) at around 18%, followed by L.A., Washington, D.C., Miami, and San Francisco.
New York’s hospitality employees as a percentage of the total workforce is below Dallas, Houston, Miami, Atlanta, Phoenix, and Seattle, and just about tied with Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston.
