COVID-19 and sectoral employment trends: assessing resilience in the US leisure and hospitality industry

Abstract

This study explores the vulnerability and resilience of the US Leisure and Hospitality industry sector-wise by taking employment levels in seven different business segments. An autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model approach was applied to daily time series data of employment and COVID-19 to assess each sector's fragility and resilience. The findings reveal that museums and historical places, performing arts, and sports are the worst influenced sectors and exhibit low resilience. The accommodation sector initially shows high vulnerability; however, it bounces back by showing high resilience compared to some of the other sectors. The rest of the sector presents the same story negatively influenced by pandemic but eventually reveals a sign of recovery. A detailed discussion with the theoretical and practical implications is provided.