Restaurants Projected to Add 502k Seasonal Jobs this Summer

Summer is the busiest season for restaurants in many parts of the country, and the stronger business leads to additional employment opportunities at all levels of a restaurant operation. These summer jobs are typically filled by a wide variety of individuals – teenagers, college students, teachers – even retirees who want to pick up a few shifts at the 19th hole of their local golf course.

Restaurants are expected to add 502,000 seasonal jobs this summer, according to the National Restaurant Association’s 25th annual Eating and Drinking Place Summer Employment Forecast.

That would represent the strongest seasonal hiring since 2017, when eating and drinking places added 530,000 summer jobs.

While the overall labor market remains tight, a pre-summer uptick in the restaurant industry’s prime labor pool is driving the optimistic summer employment forecast. Teenagers and young adults – the age cohorts most likely to work seasonal jobs – are returning to the labor force in numbers not seen in years. (More details below.)

[Note: The 2020 – 2022 summers are excluded from the chart above because they were not typical hiring seasons. After losing millions of jobs during the early months of the pandemic, restaurants were still working to rebuild their teams back to pre-pandemic levels. As a result, it was not possible to distinguish between pandemic recovery and seasonal hiring during those three summers.]

Maine will see the strongest job growth

Seasonal hiring varies significantly by state and is influenced by weather changes as well as the reliance on summer travel and tourism. For these reasons, states in the northeast typically see the strongest growth in restaurant jobs during the summer months.

The states projected to register the largest proportional employment increase during the 2023 summer season are Maine (31%), Alaska (20%), Rhode Island (17%), Delaware (17%), New Hampshire (12%), New Jersey (12%) and Massachusetts (11%).

The states projected to add the most eating and drinking place jobs during the 2023 summer season are New York (45,000), California (39,500), Texas (36,500), New Jersey (30,800), Massachusetts (27,000), Illinois (23,600), Ohio (19,600), Michigan (18,700) and North Carolina (18,100).

Due to the fact that their busiest seasons for travel and tourism are not in the summer months, Florida (-8,700) and Arizona (-2,500) are projected to register declines in eating and drinking place employment during the 2023 summer season.

View the summer employment forecast for every state.