Tourism Impact
The news is full of stories about one large businesses shedding employees in this age of COVID-19…43-thousand union employees of Disney World in Florida were placed on furlough a few days ago…because with people being forced to stay at home and entertainment venues being closed, there’s no income to pay them.
It’s estimated that 5.9 million jobs will be gone, at least temporarily, by the end of this month across the country as the tourism industry is devastated by coronavirus. But a new survey released this morning suggests Iowa is well off in that category, relatively speaking.
The website WalletHub compared the 50 states and District of Columbia across 10 key metrics, including share of businesses in travel and tourism-related industries. Iowa was the second least affected state in the survey.
We rank 49th in terms of the share of the state’s GDP tied to travel and tourism…and 38th in the share of employment tied to those industries.
We tend to stay at home even when we can travel, as Iowa ranks 40th in the survey in share of consumer expenditure on travel…and we’re 29th in travel and tourism consumer spending per capita.
These are broad numbers, of course…if your business is one of those in travel and tourism, you’re devastated. But as we look toward rebuilding our broken economy, Iowa is 32nd in the country in terms of share of business in travel and tourism. Our economy is based on other things, like agribusiness, that has its own challenges.
Not much of a silver lining for us here…but these days, we’ll take whatever we can get.
