San Diego County could have one of the most affected workforces by COVID-19 because of a reliance on hospitality and leisure jobs, says a new study.

Ecommerce site Volusion said the San Diego metro area will be the ninth hardest hit area by job losses to the coronavirus.

It based its study on the number of retail, leisure and hospitality jobs in the nation’s 53 largest metro areas. In San Diego County’s case, the jobs made up about 23.1 percent of the workforce.

Volusion used 2019 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to calculate the number of jobs that could be lost during closures.


At the time, there were about 145,400 retail workers and 202,400 leisure and hospitality workers in San Diego County.

Still, other areas will probably feel the brunt of the losses harder. Las Vegas will be the worst hit, Volusion said, with 39 percent of its workforce in those industries.

In San Diego County, unemployment data is only available up until March 14 — a full week before Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home orders. It shows San Diego County had lost 10,100 jobs by the second week in March.

Much of the job loss was not yet in professions studied by Volusion, but in construction, specialty trade contractors and administrative support services.


In addition to Las Vegas, Volusion said other large metros hard hit would be Orlando, New Orleans, Miami and San Antonio.

The study also considered the cost of living in the metros for how the economic impact of the coronavirus may make life more difficult. In San Diego County, the cost of living was 16 percent higher than average, said data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Not all areas of California have as much work in retail, leisure and hospitality as a percentage of total jobs.

San Jose has about 16.6 percent of those type of jobs and is considered the least likely to feel COVID-19 closures out of 53 of the nation’s largest metros.


Riverside County has the same percentage of jobs likely affected as San Diego County, 23.1 percent. In Los Angeles it is 21.5 percent; Sacramento, 20.6 percent; and San Francisco, 19.7 percent.

Early analysis suggests job losses from COVID-19 will go beyond retail, leisure and hospitality. A report from Moody’s Analytics last week said nearly 80 million jobs were at high or moderate risk for possible loss.

It starts with a lot of the jobs expected in leisure and hospitality, but also goes on to work in oil drilling, manufacturing, construction and education.

“People are going to be buying less of everything. The stock market is down and wiping out people’s nest eggs,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s, told CNN. “They’re worried ‘Am I going to get sick? Are my parents going to get sick?’ That’s a prescription for people going into the bunker and for job losses.”