Pittsburgh Restaurant Jobs Down 35 Percent During Pandemic

PITTSBURGH, PA — Plenty of anecdotal evidence exists that the coronavirus outbreak has taken a terrible toll on Pittsburgh-area bars and restaurants and their employees. But a new University of Pittsburgh study quantifies the staggering number of industry jobs lost locally as a result of the pandemic.

Pitt's Center for Social & Urban Research found that more than 31,000 bar and restaurant workers lost their jobs between October 2019 and October 2020. The industry has gone from employing 88,000 to 57,000, a decline of 35 percent.

Those declines could increase after Gov. Tom Wolf announced a three-week statewide restriction on indoor dining beginning Saturday because of a coronavirus surge in Pennsylvania. Dining and other mitigation measures were announced as officials have become increasingly concerned hospitals soon could run out of available beds for patients and staff to provide treatment.

The Pitt study encompassed employment trends of 4,226 restaurants and other eating places in southwestern Pennsylvania, which researchers defined as Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington, and Westmoreland counties. The study also looked at more than 600 establishments classified as drinking places and 445 categorized as special food service. That category includes caterers, food carts and related mobile food services.

Full-service, sit-down restaurant workers took the biggest hit during the study period, with employment down 54 percent. That's a devastating number, but not nearly as bad as the job level in April, when employment at full-service restaurants had declined by more than 80 percent.

Fast-food restaurants and those offering takeout only service suffered the smallest declines, dipping 11 percent between October 2019 and October 2020.

With several coronavirus vaccines on the horizon, will many restaurants return to their pre-pandemic staffing levels? Pitt researchers did not provide a forecast, but did provide data that likely will cause laid-off workers concern.

While industry levels have increased since their April low point, the most recent job gains came between April and June. Since June, restaurant employment levels have remained relatively flat and significantly below levels before the pandemic began.

See the entire report here.