Hiring in US hospitality sector offsetting slowdown in tech-related recruitment: Report

The leisure-and-hospitality industry is rebuilding its workforce after cutting back during the pandemic's early days. In contrast, companies focused on providing business and tech-related services have slowed their growth in recent months.

Operators of hotels, bars and restaurants, which were hit hard as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, are now among the US' fastest-growing employers, offsetting a slowdown in tech-related hiring, The Wall Street Journal said. The leisure-and-hospitality industry is rebuilding its workforce after cutting back during the pandemic's early days. In contrast, companies focused on providing business and tech-related services have slowed their growth in recent months.

Because the hospitality industry includes a larger number of private-sector jobs than the tech and information sectors, the shift in hiring patterns has helped keep the US unemployment rate at a 53-year low and the overall job market tight, the Wall Street Journal said. Since November, about half of job-cut announcements among US-based employers have come from tech companies, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The cuts partially reverse some of the hiring made during the height of the pandemic, when lockdowns led to increased demand for tech products and services. Payrolls grew faster at most companies in the S&P 500's technology and consumer-discretionary sectors during the first two years of the pandemic than during the preceding two-year period, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of FactSet data.

WSJ said factors such as a return to pre-pandemic consumer habits, rising interest rates and fears of an economic downturn have prompted some companies to recalibrate their head counts. Amazon.com, for example, nearly doubled its workforce amid increased demand for its e-commerce, grocery and cloud-computing businesses. The company grew to more than 1.5 million employees at the end of last year from about 800,000 at the end of 2019, FactSet data show. Amazon recently announced layoffs totalling more than 18,000 staffers.

The Wall Street Journal said the tech layoffs might not be affecting the broader employment data for other reasons. Job-cut announcements don't always shrink company workforces as much as promised. Business can improve, vacant jobs can go unfilled and layoffs can sometimes take months to execute. Hiring also remains strong among some of the country's biggest companies. (ANI)

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