Final Tally: Travel Lost $1.1 Trillion in U.S. Economic Output in ‘20

U.S. Travel Association | March 17, 2021

WASHINGTON — March 17, 2021 —Travel’s economic footprint in the United States shrank a staggering 42% last year, from $2.6 trillion to $1.5 trillion, according to new end-of-year totals prepared for the U.S. Travel Association by the research firm Tourism Economics. The employment devastation was similarly massive: travel-supported jobs fell by 5.6 million in 2020 (16.7 million to 11.1 million)—a whopping 65% of all American jobs lost to the economic fallout of the pandemic. Travel and tourism had supported employment for 11% of the U.S. workforce prior to the onset of COVID. The new data on travel’s dramatic losses arrives as...