Tourism supports an estimated 91% of total employment in Antigua and Barbuda when direct, indirect and induced jobs are taken into account, highlighting the extraordinary reach of the industry across the country’s labour market, according to a new International Labour Organization report.
The figure, based on a 2019 estimate cited in the ILO’s Informality in the Tourism Sector in the Eastern Caribbean, was the highest among the five countries examined — Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada and Saint Lucia.
Saint Lucia followed at 78%, while tourism supported an estimated 41% of employment in Grenada, 38% in Dominica and 31% in Barbados.
The ILO report, released September 25, examines the importance of tourism to Eastern Caribbean economies while focusing particularly on the workers and small businesses behind the industry and the prevalence of informal economic activity.
The 91% figure does not mean that 91% of Antigua and Barbuda’s workforce was directly employed by hotels, restaurants, tour companies or other tourism establishments.
Rather, the estimate incorporates tourism’s direct, indirect and induced employment effects.
Direct employment includes people working within tourism businesses themselves, while indirect employment can include jobs in industries supplying goods and services to tourism businesses. Induced employment reflects additional economic activity supported when tourism workers and businesses spend their income elsewhere in the economy.
The report makes clear that direct tourism employment is considerably lower than estimates incorporating those wider economic linkages. It gives examples from other countries, noting that tourism directly accounted for 10.5% of employment in Dominica, while direct tourism employment in Grenada represented 17.1%, with another 25.8% attributed to indirect linkages.
The Antigua and Barbuda employment figure comes alongside another measure showing the country’s exceptional reliance on tourism.
The ILO report says Antigua and Barbuda recorded the highest tourism contribution to GDP among the five countries studied, at 77.3% in 2025, citing World Travel and Tourism Council data.
Grenada’s share was 60%, Saint Lucia’s 57.4%, Barbados’ 23.1% and Dominica’s 22.3%.
The report describes Antigua and Barbuda’s tourism industry as one of the earliest developed in the Eastern Caribbean and among the region’s most consolidated.
Separate IMF data cited by the ILO put Antigua and Barbuda’s gross tourism receipts at approximately $1 billion in 2024, equivalent to 46.8% of GDP under that measure. That share is projected to reach 48.5% by 2029.
The industry’s influence also extends beyond hotels and stayover visitors.
About 70% of visitors to Antigua and Barbuda arrive by cruise ship, according to Caribbean Tourism Organization data cited in the study.
Cruise passenger arrivals reached 563,699 by October 2024, while approximately 330,000 stayover visitors were recorded for 2024.
But the ILO study argues that the size of tourism’s contribution does not by itself guarantee secure or high-quality employment.
It identifies informality as an important challenge across Eastern Caribbean tourism, particularly among smaller businesses and workers who may operate without the protections and benefits normally associated with formal employment.
The report says workers in informal arrangements can face low wages, variable or long working hours, limited social protection, gender discrimination and inadequate occupational safety and health conditions.
Small tourism businesses can meanwhile face difficulty obtaining financing, accessing digital markets and integrating into tourism value chains. Complicated administrative requirements and a perception that the costs of becoming formal outweigh the benefits can also discourage formalization.
That issue is particularly significant for Antigua and Barbuda given the extent to which employment and economic activity are linked, directly or indirectly, to visitors.
Information accompanying the study shows Antigua and Barbuda’s overall informality rate increased from 12.7% in 2018 to 19.3% in 2023, despite continued expansion of the tourism economy.
The ILO does not recommend dealing with the problem solely through tougher enforcement.
Instead, the study proposes measures aimed at making formalization more achievable and beneficial for workers and businesses, including better access to finance, stronger skills development, expanded social protection, improved compliance with labour standards and greater support for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.
The findings underscore how deeply tourism reaches into Antigua and Barbuda’s economy: its impact is not confined to hotel and restaurant employees but extends through suppliers, transportation, retail, entertainment and other economic activity generated by visitor spending.
With the report’s 2019 estimate putting tourism’s direct, indirect and induced employment impact at 91%, changes in the industry’s performance have implications for much of the country’s workforce — making the quality and security of tourism-related employment as significant as the number of visitors arriving on the island.
This article was originally published by Antigua News Room. Read the original article here: ILO Report Says Tourism Supports 91% of Employment in Antigua and Barbuda.