By: Rachyl Jones, Jennifer Irving and Dylan Croll
“You know that 500 people applied for your job,” said a human resources manager at Front Gate Ticketing Solutions, owned by Live Nation Entertainment. “You beat out over 500 people.”
Amantha Dikin got offered her job as a sales coordinator at Front Gate Tickets in the summer of 2019, one month after graduating college.
“I was over the moon,” she said. “When I got there, it was like I got my dream job right out of college. I was the youngest person there by seven or eight years.”
With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, everything changed.
“My industry was crushed,” Dikin said, noting that pivoting live events to a COVID-safe platform was unrealistic. “It was hard to stay optimistic when there was no end in sight for my industry.”
In May, Dikin asked her manager, “Can you please let me know if I need to look for another job?”
She did. Front Gate Tickets furloughed Dikin for over a year. She is now back at the company.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment report categorizes jobs relating to live events, like Dikin’s, under the title “leisure and hospitality.” It includes performing arts, spectator sports, food and drink services, and more. This industry took the largest hit from the pandemic with a nearly 50 percent decrease in payroll employees in only two months. In February 2020, before the pandemic, the number of unemployed people in leisure and hospitality was just below 800,000. At the height of the lockdowns associated with the pandemic in the spring of 2020, that number reached almost 5 million. The economy has been slowly recovering, and with it, so has the events industry.
Still, the pandemic continues to worry Americans employed in this industry. Since the number of new cases dropped to an all-time low in June, the Delta Variant has brought about a new spike. September saw a whopping 3 million new cases, as compared to 380,000 in June, an eightfold increase. Additionally, last year’s COVID-19 new cases data spiked beginning in October and remained high during the winter, suggesting the possibility of another surge in the coming months.
Many young Americans working live events like weddings, concerts, and festivals have experienced a tumultuous year. Some recent college graduates, like Dikin, have gotten their dream jobs and been subsequently laid off. Most have returned to such jobs only to again face an uncertain future as winter approaches. At a time where the entire live events industry could close once again, should recent graduates in leisure and hospitality worry about another layoff period?
Kim Autry, who has worked in HR talent acquisition for over ten years, said no.
“It’s not always first-in first-out,” she said.
And for people who got laid off during the pandemic, “It won’t hurt you,” she added. “We don’t judge people for anything that happened during COVID. If you’ve got the background that I want, I’m going to be blowing up your phone trying to get you.”
Autry worked in the business of recruiting employees to various companies, which stagnated during the pandemic. After suffering a salary cut of 30 percent, she herself was laid off.
“People were not spending. Companies were not making money,” she said. “It’s all about the product.”
Since then, Autry has now joined another HR consulting firm.
Though Dikin is now back at Front Gate Tickets, the pandemic still stalled her career. She moved back into her parents’ house and worked internships and other early-career jobs to maintain an income. During her furloughed period, she contemplated leaving the company.
“I wanted to stick around because I felt like I hadn’t been given the opportunity to grow,” she said. “I already mastered this entry-level role, but I didn’t have enough experience to justify a junior sales role, or that next step.”
Even in the worst months of the pandemic, some live event workers remained employed.
Drew Cameron, a 2019 graduate, started her dream job at Washington-D.C.-based event planning company Evoke Design and Creative, on March 2, 2020.
“From the beginning, I was placing rental orders for upcoming events, packing for the next wedding, taking incoming calls from prospective clients and a million other things,” she said. “That lasted two weeks.”
Cameron’s job duties quickly flipped from planning events to postponing them.
“I used to have nightmares that I forgot to tell the band we moved the date and would get a call on the original wedding day saying, ‘We’re here. Where is everyone?’” she said.
While the events world has started up again, she still feels the pressures of the pandemic. Evoke is not only planning 2021 and 2022 events, but it is still organizing 2020 postponements.
While working the events, Cameron said, “hand sanitizer is pumped so much my hands are cracking by the end of the night.”
The industry is also struggling with supply chain and staffing shortages, Cameron said, noting that many independent contractors had to find new jobs during the pandemic to support their families.
Both Cameron’s and Dikin’s experiences bore resemblance to millions of other young people and live events workers.
BLS does not cross-reference the 20-24 age group with the “leisure and hospitality” category in its data, but the individual unemployment data speaks to larger trends that hit both the events industry and young workers during the pandemic. By April 2020, the number of unemployed people aged 20-24 tripled, and the number in “leisure and hospitality” increased fivefold. That month, unemployed people in “leisure and hospitality” accounted for 21 percent of all unemployed people in the United States.
Over the next six months, the 20-24 age statistic halved the number of unemployed people, but then plateaued. The next six months showed only a 4 percent decrease in unemployment, and the BLS reports that September of this year saw the most recent significant drop at 15 percent from the previous month. The number is now 1,166,000, which is 18 percent higher than the February 2020 pre-pandemic number, and 17 percent more than the Sept 2019 statistic, or the last pre-pandemic month of September.
Similarly, the “leisure and hospitality” statistic has steadily declined over the past 17 months, lowering to 1,019,000 this month. That number is now 22 percent more than the February 2020 number and 33 percent more than in September 2019.
Compared to national data, both these categories of workers were uniquely hit during the pandemic.
The data of employees on payroll in the “leisure and hospitality” sector shows a similar trend with different stakes. Employers within the industry had little hesitation in laying off and furloughing people. Only two months into the pandemic, the number of employees nearly halved from 16.3 million to 8.6 million, a drop of 7.7 million people. This accounted for 38 percent of April layoffs, more than three times as many as the next highest category, education and health services. By June, the payroll grew back to about 80 percent of its pre-COVID number and didn’t pick up again until January 2021. Today, the payroll number clocks in at 15.4 million, only 5 percent less than the February 2020 statistic and 8 percent less than September 2019.
Data shows that the leisure and hospitality industry is reaching its pre-COVID numbers, with each month looking more promising than the last. At the same time, last year’s spike in cases during winter and this year’s new Delta Variant create a cocktail of uncertainty for live events workers. If events were to be cancelled again, the industry might fall behind on all the progress it made this year.
“The challenge for winter months lies in restoring public confidence and giving the industry the demand it needs to continue a steady recovery,” said economists Charles S. Gascon, Nathan Jefferson and Devin Werner in a Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis publication.
Looking to the future of young people in all industries, Autry believes the future is bright. “I think your generation is a shining light right now…. If anything, in my mind, if there was a time for young people to hit the ground running, and move up fast, it’s right now.”
