Accommodation & food services
The share of jobs within commuting reach of a tract that are in the accommodation and food services sector.
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Of all the jobs within commuting reach of a tract, the share located in NAICS sector 72. The twenty sectors together account for the whole reachable pool, so this describes the mix of available work rather than its volume. See Accessible jobs for how the pool is defined.
The Census Bureau defines the sector as comprising "establishments providing customers with lodging and/or preparing meals, snacks, and beverages for immediate consumption," adding that the two are grouped together "because the two activities are often combined at the same establishment" (2022 NAICS definitions).
The combination is the main interpretive difficulty. Lodging is largely bought by visitors, while restaurants, bars and takeaways are bought mostly by people already nearby — residents, commuters and passing traffic. A single high share can therefore describe a resort area, a downtown restaurant district, a stretch of highway interchange, or a hotel cluster near an airport. The number is a reliable signal that customer-facing hospitality employment is concentrated in reach of the tract, and a weak signal about which kind.
Metrics in this family#
Considerations#
The measurement date matters. A job enters LODES when a person has earnings from an employer in both the first and second quarters, and the count corresponds to jobs held at the start of the second quarter, in early April (LODES Design and Methodology Report). Seasonal resort staffing is therefore observed before the summer build-up. The Bureau also notes that LODES may underrepresent very short jobs held for just one pay period, and short tenures are common in this sector.
Jobs are counted where the work is located, not where workers live, at the address the employer reports in its administrative filings.
To protect confidentiality, the Census Bureau infuses noise into the employer and establishment records behind these counts, applying the same factor to a worksite over time so that longitudinal change is not distorted. Industry sector is a secondary characteristic in LODES, estimated during that protection rather than carried through directly, which adds uncertainty to a single tract's sector split.
Alaska and Michigan have no workplace files for the two most recent data years, and Puerto Rico is not covered; tracts there carry no value.
References#
- 12022 NAICS definitionshttps://www.census.gov/naics/2022NAICS/2022_NAICS_Descriptions.xlsx
- 2LODES Design and Methodology Reporthttps://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2025/adrm/ces/CES-WP-25-52.pdf