Dive Brief:
- Restaurants are forecast to hire roughly 450,000 workers this summer, according to the National Restaurant Association, 4% below than the 469,000 jobs the NRA said restaurants added last summer.
- The NRA said the pool of available seasonal labor is shallower than recent years with “200,000 fewer teenagers than were in the labor force in both April 2024 and April 2025,” and a slight decline in 20- to 24-year-old workers as well, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
- Such changes in labor force composition could result in difficulty meeting marginal staffing needs, especially in markets, like the Northeast, where summer hiring tends to be most intense.
Dive Insight:
The NRA said BLS projections indicated that seven states are expected to see increases in restaurant employment above 10%.
Seasonal hiring in 2026 may lag recent years
Unsurprisingly, New England and Midatlantic coastal states — which have particularly seasonal tourist trends — dominate the list, with smaller, but still proportionally large increases in New York, Maryland, inland New England, the upper Midwest, and the Northwest.
Where restaurants hire the most seasonal workers
Tight labor supply in these states could result in temporary increases in wage growth — which has been relatively flat in recent years when adjusted for inflation — as well as potentially high turnover and hiring costs.
The NRA has said that expanding the supply of labor through immigration reform is one of its major political priorities in 2026. That effort has been bolstered by the salience of affordability in recent elections, which has given restaurants an important lever in shifting the political balance on immigration. At the same time, the NRA is prioritizing efforts to prevent or roll back efforts to eliminate the tip credit.
