U.S. Travel Executive Vice President of Public Affairs and Policy Tori Emerson Barnes issued the following statement on the September jobs report released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:

“Today’s employment analysis points to an uneven recovery for the critically important Leisure and Hospitality sector, which saw relatively few jobs added in September (just 74,000) compared to earlier months where hundreds of thousands of jobs were recovered. These uneven gains are largely attributed to the virus variant that affected travel at summer’s end.

“There remains a great need for Congress to provide additional federal relief and incentives to sustain travel-dependent businesses until a complete recovery can take hold – which will require the return of business travel as well as international inbound travel.”