Employment Impact of Recent U.S. Olympic Games [Chart of the Week]

Each Saturday, #we publish our Chart of the Week. It presents interesting trends and data, usually related to the U.S. labor market.

This week, I thought I would investigate the employment impact of the most recent Olympic games in the U.S. This chart shows employment spike that occurred during the 1992 Atlanta summer games and the 2002 Salt Lake City winter games. There are two obvious differences between the two:

1. The Atlanta games took place during an economic expansionary period while the Salt Lake games occurred immediately following the 2001 recession.
2. The differences in the number of jobs in the spike is noteworthy. The Atlanta games (left axis) appeared to create around 31,000 jobs while the Salt Lake games created around 11,000. It’s not clear why there is such a difference but in both cases, the employment spike is clear.