The Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), part of the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), recently released passenger-airline employment data for December 2015.
The report said U.S.-scheduled passenger airlines hired 3.7 percent more workers in December 2015 compared with December 2014. The total number of hires for December 2015, 400,422, is the highest monthly total that the airlines have had since August 2008.
December 2015 also marks the 25th month in a row that U.S. scheduled passenger airlines’ full-time equivalent (FTE) employment surpassed the same month from the year earlier.
In terms of month-to-month data, the amount of FTEs has not changed between November and December, after four months in a row that showed increases.
The categories included in scheduled passenger airlines are low-cost, network, regional and other airlines.
There were four network airlines that employed approximately two-thirds of the scheduled passenger airline FTEs. For December 2015, these same airlines also confirmed 3.5 percent more FTEs over December 2014.
Five low-cost airlines said they had 7.7 percent more FTEs in December 2015 compared with December 2014. JetBlue Airways, Allegiant Airlines, Virgin America, Spirit Airlines and Southwest Airlines confirmed these rises. Frontier Airlines, however, confirmed declines in FTEs.
