Where the hotels are, and where the laundries are not

Across the 44 states where both industries are disclosed, there are 7.3 accommodation jobs for every commercial laundry job. 19 states sit above that line.

Nevada is the extreme: 165,778 accommodation jobs against 4,368 in laundry, a ratio of 38.0. At the other end Connecticut runs at 2.7, which is a different industry structure rather than a different amount of linen.

It is tempting to read the top of this table as unmet demand. It is not, quite. A hotel that runs its own laundry has those workers counted under accommodation, so a state full of large resorts with in-house plants will show a high ratio and have no shortage at all.

That is most of what is happening at the top. How fast that gap opened is a separate question. What the number does say is where hotel demand is large relative to the commercial laundry sector serving it — which is where an operator either built their own plant, or wishes they had.

The laundries-per-100-hotels column is the same question asked of operators rather than headcount. A state can have adequate laundry employment concentrated in two very large plants, which is a different risk profile from the same employment spread across forty.

Concentration is efficient until the plant that serves half the state has a bad week. Spread is resilient and more expensive. Neither is the right answer everywhere, which is why both columns are here rather than one composite score.

Both counts are 2025 annual averages from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which covers every establishment subject to unemployment insurance. It is a census rather than a sample, so the counts are solid — the interpretation is where the care is needed.

Linen crosses state lines, and a plant near a border serves both sides of it. 7 states are not shown at all because BLS withheld a figure to protect the confidentiality of individual employers. Employment counts jobs rather than people, and a part-time job counts the same as a full-time one. The same question asked of the UK uses a different survey and is not directly comparable.