600 Minneapolis Jobs Are Supported By Airbnb: Report

MINNEAPOLIS, MN — A report published Wednesday finds that Airbnb supports 600 jobs in Minneapolis in 2016, as part of the 730,000 jobs it supported globally. Minneapolis was one of two Midwest cities that made the 200-city report (Chicago being the other, with 4,700 Airbnb-supported jobs). The report comes on the heels of Airbnb's announcement of PROJECT 612, the company's commitment to mobilizing the Twin Cities to take full economic advantage of the 2017 Super Bowl.

Study details

Airbnb Head of Global Policy and Public Affairs Chris Lehane released the figures in a presentation to the Consumer Technology Association in Washington, DC, where he emphasized how Airbnb’s platform not only empowers our host community to use their homes to make needed income, but also empowers local communities through hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of jobs supported by Airbnb host and guest spending and its ripple effects. Up to 50 percent of Airbnb guest spending occurs in the neighborhoods where they stay, according to a news release.

The NERA study was conducted in conjunction with the release of Airbnb’s Economic Empowerment Agenda. The Agenda includes: our Living Wage Pledge, by which we’ll indicate hosts who commit to paying their house cleaners at least $15 per hour; our own commitment to paying our major vendors $15 per hour for employees who work on our accounts in the US; and our commitment to double the size of our host community in urban majority-minority districts and disadvantaged neighborhoods in the US within two years.

Numbers of jobs supported were calculated by NERA using classical “input-output” economic analysis. This work modeled the number of jobs based on data about Airbnb income earned by hosts, host spending activity, and guest spending activity in local communities.

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