The return of summer vacations in the post-pandemic era seems to be on hold, based on the latest job data from BLS. Blame rising prices.
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It's shaping up to be a cruel summer for Americans who just wanted to take some time off — but can't afford to get themselves anywhere.
Buried within the lastest Bureau of Labor Statistics data on employment, there's one trend that might be bumming workers out: Fewer Americans took time off from work for vacation or personal days in June this year than in June 2022.
"I was surprised to see that the number of Americans who were absent from work for vacations when the survey was done was actually lower than last year," Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, told Insider. "I had expected to see an increase in vacationing among working Americans. Perhaps inflation is really biting, and people are staying at home rather than paying huge airfare."
The following chart shows that the post-pandemic recovery in the number of workers taking vacation in June has stalled, with a slight drop from June 2022 to June 2023.
Anyone who's tried to book summer travel has likely encountered high prices. Insider's Bianca Giacobone reported that flights from the US to Europe were averaging $1,200 for a round trip ticket — a 37% increase from both 2019 and 2022. A report from Hopper, a travel website, found that airfares to Europe and Asia from the states are at their highest levels in over five years.
To be sure, airline ticket inflation isn't as bad as it was last year. From May 2021 to May 2022, the BLS index for airline fares rose by 37.8%; in May 2023, the index for prices dropped 13.4% from that previous year. Even so, airline ticket inflation came in at 30.2% for all of 2022.
It speaks to the role that inflation continues to play in the lives of everyday Americans. When it comes to why fewer Americans are taking time off for vacation this summer, Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su told Insider that it's "an important question."
"We are very, very focused on bringing down the costs of things," Su said. "That's something that Americans feel every day, right in their pocketbooks."
So, while Americans might be spending more on traveling this summer, it might be even further restricted to who can actually afford it. Insider's Dan Latu reported that short-term rental hosts were set to see their revenue decline this year, in a first since the pandemic's onset. At the same time, mid-tier rentals — the middle-class of Airbnb, where rooms aren't barebones cheap or exceptionally luxurious — were getting hammered hard.
Meanwhile, luxury properties — and clients — are unphased by the inflation-induced vacation drought.
"It's a completely different clientele," Ric Kenworthy, a Phoenix-based short-term-rental-property manager overseeing 92 rental properties, told Latu. "They're not concerned with a dip in the stock market or whether we're expecting a recession."
