Recognizing hotel employees on National Hotel Employee Day

September 1 is National Hotel Employee Day, which recognizes the workers who keep the nation’s approximately 65,000 hotels, motels, and other lodging establishments running smoothly. As the summer travel season draws to a close, we examine some of the jobs found in the traveler accommodation industry.

Traveler accommodation industry employment was nearly 1.7 million in May 2022. Maids and housekeeping cleaners (364,990) and hotel, motel, and resort desk clerks (223,840) were the largest occupations in this industry. Together, these two occupations made up 35 percent of industry employment.

Several jobs related to food service were also among the largest occupations in the industry, including waiters and waitresses (107,530), restaurant cooks (62,060), and dining room and cafeteria attendants and bartender helpers (43,140). Outside of the food preparation and serving related occupational group, the largest occupations in the travel accommodation industry included general maintenance and repair workers (86,730) and gambling dealers (39,600).

The traveler accommodation industry had an annual average wage of $39,730, below the U.S. average of $61,900 for all industries combined. Of the 15 largest occupations in this industry, only lodging managers ($72,910) and general and operations managers ($90,940) had above-average wages. Several of the largest occupations in traveler accommodation had annual average wages of $40,000 per year or less, including maids and housekeeping cleaners ($31,070) and hotel, motel, and resort desk clerks ($30,150).

These data are from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program. For more information, see the OEWS data for traveler accommodation. The number of establishments in the travel accommodation industry represents 2021 annual data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.