Walk into almost any hotel lobby or restaurant patio in America this summer, and there is a good chance you are being served by someone still working out what they want to be when they grow up. A new report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that one in four employed 16 to 24 year olds, about 5.3 million young workers out of 21.3 million employed youth, worked in leisure and hospitality in July 2026. That is a bigger share than retail, at 18 percent, and more than double education and health services, at 14 percent. For a huge swath of young America, the first paycheck comes from a hotel front desk, a restaurant floor or a resort pool deck.
We read that number as good news. Hospitality has always been one of the most accessible doors into the workforce, with few barriers to entry, flexible scheduling around school, and fast paced, people facing work that builds confidence quickly. It also tells us the industry's appeal has not faded. Even with a huge wave of seasonal youth workers filling shifts, the same government data, this time from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, shows leisure and hospitality still posting a job openings rate around 4.4 percent in July, among the highest of any major sector, after running as high as 5.5 percent back in April. Demand for people, in other words, keeps outpacing even a very large supply of newcomers.
Two Different Jobs Under One Roof
Here is the nuance those numbers hide. A summer job and a hospitality career are often two very different things, even when they happen in the same building. Most of that 25 percent of young workers are filling front of house, seasonal or entry level shifts, exactly the roles that make a great first job. Come September, many head back to school, and the property has to fill that shift again next June. Meanwhile, the roles that actually run a hotel or restaurant year round, the executive chef, the sommelier, the general manager, the director of rooms, are built on years of formal training and hands on experience that a summer between semesters simply cannot provide.
Where the Career Track Already Exists
That is precisely the gap we spend our days closing. Italy has spent decades building exactly this kind of career pipeline. Five year istituto alberghiero programs combine classroom study with real kitchen and floor placements, producing chefs and hospitality managers who have been training for the job since they were teenagers themselves, just on a very different track than a US summer hire. Employers we work with are not choosing between hiring young Americans for the season and hiring experienced Italian professionals for the long haul. The two fit together well: one fills the shift, the other runs the operation.
That is the work we do every day at ItalianExperience, connecting US hotels and restaurants with Italian chefs, sommeliers and hospitality managers who arrive already trained for the career track, and guiding both sides through the visa process that gets them legally to work. It is less about replacing a summer workforce than about giving properties the experienced core that keeps everything else running smoothly.
Data referenced from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS).
A hospitality team is strongest when it has both: the energy of a first job, and the steadiness of a career.