Economy
The Roller-Coaster Economies of Vacation Towns
The end of summer is nearly here. Which U.S. cities are about to radically change?
Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer, is right around the corner. As we head back to school or back to work, stuffing bathing suits in hard-to-reach drawers, it's a good time to ask: what does the end of tourist season mean for cities and metros that rely on tourism dollars?
Using Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data on monthly employment (not adjusted for seasonality) from 2004 to 2013, my colleague Todd Gabe, an economist at the University of Maine, crunched the numbers to identify the places that see the biggest drops in leisure and hospitality employment.