RESTAURANT AND hotel bosses have had a tough year. Some 700,000 hospitality workers threw in the towel on average each month in the past year. Bars, cafés and eateries are 1.3m workers short relative to the 16.9m employed before covid-19. On January 4th the Bureau of Labour Statistics reported that a record 4.5m Americans quit their jobs in November, 9% up on a month earlier. The quit rate in leisure and hospitality jumped by a percentage point, to 6.4%. Uncertainty from the Omicron variant may make matters worse: as cases surged in December, restaurant footfall fell sharply, according to OpenTable, an online booking website.
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