It’s that time of the year again. The holiday where millions of Americans gather together to consume copious amounts of food with family and friends. Yes, I am talking about Thanksgiving. Not every member of the workforce is able to take the day off to enjoy in the festivities.
Because Thanksgiving has become synonymous with shopping and holidays created just to promote consumer spending, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, retail employees may come first to mind. And even though IBISWorld does expect a total of 220.6 million people to shop on these retail holidays, I am referring to the workforce that you may not be thinking about: the police force, hospital staff, and emergency responders.
For example, according to the American Hospital Association, there are a total of 5,564 registered hospitals in the US, with 897,691 staffed beds. The association also reported the following full and part-time staff averages for hospitals by bed:
In Colorado, for example, the average size of hospitals located throughout the state is about 181.28 beds. That means to have fully manned systems throughout the 47 facilities reporting staffed beds in the state, it will require 164,784 full and part-time employees to work on Thanksgiving Day. While this number only represents 6.6% of total Colorado employment, it is only one portion of the labor force that is working in an industry in which organizations cannot close.
At Access/Information, this Thanksgiving we are especially thankful for the workforce that works around the clock to keep us safe.