Vermont sees precarious signs of recovery
The pandemic has hurt employment in every corner of the state. Nearly 25,000 fewer Vermonters worked in September 2020 than in September 2019—a decline of 7.5 percent. Employment fell by as much as 9 percent, depending on the county, with the northwest corner of Vermont—Grand Isle, Chittenden, and Franklin counties—seeing the largest drops.
Rooms and meals
Pandemic regulations and fears kept people away from restaurants and hotels this spring. Customers spent $182 million in Vermont on lodging and on food and beverages in restaurants from April to June of 2020—down 58 percent from the same period in 2019. While Vermont’s hospitality businesses have gradually reopened since June, so far this fiscal year rooms and meals taxes are 37 percent lower than they were at the same time last fiscal year.
Back to work
No industry has been harder hit by the COVID-19 shutdown than hotels and restaurants. But since April some of its workers have returned. The industry has seen an increase of 7,600 jobs—to 19,600—regaining more than a third of those lost since this year’s January peak. That improvement is precarious, however, as new infections are rising in Vermont and around the country. Overall, private-sector jobs in Vermont are down by 10.9 percent.
