Oregon’s Leisure and Hospitality Industry

Leisure and hospitality businesses employed an average of 199,000 workers in 2016. The largest share, three-fourths, worked in food services and drinking places. The remaining employment was about evenly split between accommodations and arts, entertainment, and recreation. During the Great Recession, employment in this industry fell by 6.1 percent from 2008 to 2010. Oregon’s all-industry employment decline was slightly steeper, with payroll jobs declining by 7.4 percent from pre-recession peak to trough. By 2016, leisure and hospitality employment rose by 22.6 percent compared with a gain of 14.4 percent for total industry employment.

We often think of leisure and hospitality as a tourism industry. While many jobs in this industry are reliant upon tourism, local spending also plays a significant role. The Oregon Tourism Commission contracts Dean Runyan Associates to produce travel spending impact analysis for Oregon and other states. According to their latest Oregon Travel Impacts report, travel spending generated 69,000 direct jobs in the accommodations and food services sector and 19,100 direct jobs in the arts, entertainment and recreation sector in 2016.

In Oregon, there were just 119 leisure and hospitality establishments that had more than 100 workers at the beginning of 2016. Of Oregon’s 192,712 leisure and hospitality jobs in March 2016, 117,206 were employed in establishments with 10 to 49 workers.

For more information about Oregon's leisure and hospitality industry, see the full report.