Persistence in Australian tourism employment industries

ABSTRACT

There are many studies that have focussed on the different dimensions of employment in several industries during COVID-19. However, the impact of the pandemic on employment in the tourism industries has been underexplored. Moreover, we are not aware of any study that has considered the impact of the pandemic on employment in different sub-sectors within the tourism industries. This paper analyzes the effect of COVID-19 on employment in Australian tourism industries using fractional integration. Using quarterly data (2004-2021) and disaggregating data by sectors, we examine two samples, one ending in December 2019 and the other one in December 2021. The novelty of this study is the consideration of the effect of this pandemic on employment in different sub-sectors that constitute the tourism industry. Our results indicate that the current pandemic has not produced significant changes in the persistence of the series. The only significant changes take place for the retail trade industry that moves from mean reversion to lack of it, and the cafes and restaurants in the opposite direction. One of the implications of the results is that interventions before the pandemic, such as concerted marketing efforts, are useful to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on tourism related industries.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• tourism
• employment
• persistence
• Australia

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• C12
• C13
• Z30

Acknowledgement

Luis A. Gil-Alana gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Grant PID2020-113691RB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033. Comments from the Editor and two anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/national-accounts/australian-national-accounts-tourism-satellite-account/latest-release

2 https://explore.data.abs.gov.au/?fs[0]=Industries%2C0%7CTourism%20and%20transport%23TOURISM_TRANSPORT%23&pg=0&fc=Industries

3 https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/national-accounts/australian-national-accounts-tourism-satellite-account/latest-release

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation: [Grant Number PID2020-113691RB-I00].