As we mark World Tourism Day, attention shifts to the millions of workers driving the sector’s recovery. From hotels to restaurants and beyond, tourism jobs are bouncing back—but the pace of recovery is uneven across regions. Reliable data is essential to understand these trends. This is where we come in. ILOSTAT provides critical insights into how tourism employment is evolving across the globe. Complementing this, a new indicator from the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UN Tourism), aimed at supporting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), will help fill remaining data gaps, enabling policymakers to better understand the labour market in this sector and shape informed decisions.
A sector on the rebound
Tourism took one of the hardest hits during the COVID-19 pandemic, with job losses felt worldwide. Now, as the industry regains momentum, we’re seeing employment rise again in hotels, restaurants, and related sectors. However, the pace and scale of this recovery differ significantly between regions. And while data for hotels and restaurants is more widely available, capturing employment figures for the entire tourism sector remains a challenge in many countries.
Filling data gaps
Currently there is no international statistical definition of tourism. In ILOSTAT, the identification of persons in the tourism sector is done using the International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC rev. 4) at the 4-digit level. The definition encompasses employment in accommodation for visitors, food and beverage services, passenger transportation, recreation and entertainment, and travel services (see methodology box for details).
But the current approach has its limits. We are unable to capture tourism employment in countries that do not provide household survey microdata to the ILO, or when they do, if it lacks the required level of detail. This leaves major gaps in our understanding of the labour market in the tourism sector in some parts of the world, including in countries where tourism is a major driver of jobs and economic development such as China.
To improve tracking of tourism employment, UN Tourism is introducing a new SDG indicator. Using ILOSTAT data to supplement its own sources, UN Tourism aims to fill some of the current data gaps and provide a clearer picture of the sector’s workforce worldwide.
Employment and decent work trends
More than 270 million workers, or approximately 8.2 percent of the global workforce, are employed in the tourism sector1See methodology box, according to ILO estimates. Unsurprisingly, popular holiday destinations tend to have a higher concentration of workers in tourism. The highest shares are found in the Cook Islands, the Bahamas, and Seychelles, where tourism accounts for between 20 and 28 per cent of total employment.
The sector is known to be labour-intensive and fast-evolving. It is a major driver of economic growth, enterprise development and job creation, particularly for women, youth, migrant workers and local communities. In recent decades, it has experienced continued expansion and diversification to become one of the largest and fastest-growing economic sectors globally. Nevertheless, according to the 2022 Conclusions of the Technical meeting on COVID-19 and sustainable recovery in the tourism sector, the sector continues to face decent work deficits, such as the prevalence of informality, variable and long working hours, low wages, limited access to social protection, gender-based discrimination, poor occupational safety and health (OSH) practices and weak regulation, enforcement and organization of labour.
Looking ahead
Tourism is a critical driver of economic development, especially in regions heavily reliant on the sector. But to ensure this growth benefits workers, it is crucial to promote the sustainable development of the sector with decent work and full and productive employment in line with the ILO Guidelines on decent work and socially responsible tourism and SDG targets 8, 12 and 14. As the sector evolves, so too must the policies that govern it, ensuring that any future growth is inclusive, fair, and beneficial to all.
Between ILOSTAT and the new SDG indicator on tourism employment, policymakers will have better tools at their disposal to track, analyse, and improve conditions in this vital sector.
Methodology
An international statistical definition for the tourism sector does not currently exist. For ILOSTAT, employment in the tourism sector is defined using the International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC Rev. 4) using the following 4-digit classes:
Accommodation for visitors |
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Passenger transportation |
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Recreation and entertainment |
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Travel agencies and reservation services |
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For more details, see the Worker and Sector Profiles (PROFILES) database description.
Users should also note that UN Tourism, in partnership with leading countries, the ILO and the United Nations Statistics Division, has created a multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholder Expert Group on Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism to lead the development of a Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism. The framework aims to support a more harmonized and integrated measurement of the impacts and dependencies of tourism on the economy, society and the environment, at both the national and sub-national levels. The framework may result in a statistical definition for tourism-related employment which differs from the above.
Country-level figures on ILOSTAT are produced using data from the ILO’s Harmonized Microdata collection, which mainly includes labour force and other household surveys. Although microdata are available for 177 countries and territories, tourism sector data can only be generated for about half due to the limited availability of sufficiently detailed ISIC categories.
Global estimates on ILOSTAT are based on actual and imputed data for 189 countries. For more detailed information, refer to the document Global and regional estimates of employment in selected economic activities and/or occupations.
UN Tourism will provide additional data on tourism employment using its own sources. Data and information on their methodology is forthcoming.
