Restaurant and hotel jobs, August 2026
Seattle-metro restaurants, bars, hotels and venues employed 214,800 people in August 2026, up 1.9% from a year earlier.
No other series on this site records 2020 as plainly. Employment in this sector fell to 102,600 in January 1990 — a drop of roughly half, inside two months, in an industry that cannot be done from home. Everything to the right of that notch is the recovery, and how close it has come to the old trend line is the question the chart is for.
It is also the sector where a job is least likely to pay the rent, which is why it is worth watching next to what the rent takes. Not seasonally adjusted, and summer is genuinely the busy season here.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, State & Area Employment, leisure and hospitality, Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue MSA, not seasonally adjusted, via FRED. Auto-generated each build.