In early November, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that the travel industry created 296,000 jobs since December 2009 – adding jobs in 29 of the past 34 months. The travel industry has recovered 59% of the jobs lost during the Great Recession, well ahead of the rest of the economy which has recouped 51% of the jobs lost.  Additionally, the travel industry has created jobs at a 16% faster pace than the rest of the economy since the overall employment recovery began in March of 2010.  The October Labor Department report shows that the economy added 171,000 jobs last month, including six thousand more travel jobs, while the unemployment rate essentially remained unchanged at 7.9%.  Here in Los Angeles, every 340 visitors create one new job.  Based on the current 2012 projection of 900,000 incremental visitors over 2011, LA is on pace to have created more than 2600 new jobs this year within LA’s travel industry.