November 2023
Over 50 million foreign visitors traveled to the United States in 2022, but foreign arrivals have yet to fully recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. A goal of the 2022 National Travel and Tourism Strategy is to attract 90 million international visitors to the United States by 2027. This strategy aims to bolster the large U.S. travel and tourism industry, with the Bureau of Economic Affairs reporting that in 2021 about 4.8 million people worked directly in travel and tourism down from nearly 6.4 million in 2019.
Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, National Travel and Tourism Office and Bureau of Economic Affairs
October 2023
America’s digital economy accounted for 10.3% of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) and supported over 8 million full- and part-time workers at an average annual compensation of $154,400 in 2021. A decade earlier, the nation’s digital economy stood at 6.3 million workers with an annual average compensation of $103,100. The digital economy includes e-commerce transactions, digital services (cloud, telecommunications, and internet and data services), digital-enabling infrastructure (software and hardware), and other digital developments.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)
September 2023
Math scores for 8th-graders declined in all 50 states between 2019 and 2022, bringing the average national score down from 281 to 273. With the decline occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic, higher-performing students also had higher incidences of: 1. full-time access to a computer; 2. a quiet place to work at least some of the time; 3. a teacher to help with schoolwork at least once or twice a week; and, 4. participation in real-time video lessons with their teacher every day or almost every day.
Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress
August 2023
Union membership of private sector workers in the United States dropped to 6% in 2022 from 9% in 2000. Within manufacturing, more than one-fifth of workers in aluminum production and processing, tires, pulp, paper, and paperboard mils, and iron and steel mills and steel products were unionized, while 3.2% or less of workers in aerospace product and parts, textile products, and computer and peripheral equipment were unionized in 2022.
Source: Barry T. Hirsch, David A. Macpherson, and William E. Even at https://www.unionstats.com/
July 2023
Photovoltaic (PV) wafers and solar cells are no longer made in the United States. Domestic production of solar specialty glass and solar-grade polysilicon is limited; however, the Solar Energy Industries Association forecasts the Inflation Reduction Act will bolster U.S. assembly of PV modules in coming years and encourage some producers to build factories domestically to make wafers, cells, inverters, and other solar components.
Sources: National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Solar Energy Industries Association
June 2023
Semiconductor and related device manufacturers in the United States employed 199,800 workers in 2022, up 5 percent from 190,700 in 2012. Another 92,000 Americans work at “fabless” firms that only design chips, estimates the Semiconductor Industry Association.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
May 2023
The U.S. economy added 236,000 new (non-farm) jobs in March 2023. In fact, two industries added more than 50,000 new jobs each that month: (1) accommodation and food services and (2) healthcare and social assistance.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
April 2023
Nearly 611,000 Americans worked in aerospace manufacturing in 2021, earning $120,100 or 57% more than the average annual pay of the nation’s private sector manufacturing workforce.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
March 2023
Over the last decade, India rose from the 18th-largest U.S. goods export market in 2012 to the 10th-largest in 2022.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau