What is the Employment Outlook for Restaurant Management?

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employment outlook for restaurant management

Anyone who’s thinking of pursuing a career in the hospitality industry is likely to be wondering about the future job outlook in restaurant management. Will growing numbers of restaurant managers be needed in the future? Let’s take a look at what experts in the US government and other sources have to say about how many restaurant managers will be needed in the coming decade. The US government maintains detailed records about the labor force in the USA. It employs analysts at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics to make forecasts about how many workers will be needed in the future in each industry. According to their projections, employers in the USA will need 9 percent more restaurant and food service managers by the year 2026. That’s an additional 27,600 food service management jobs that they expect will be added to the US economy.

Related Resource: 30 Best Affordable Online Bachelor’s in Hospitality Management

What About the Threat of Restaurant Automation?

Researchers such as Dr Michael A. Osborne and Dr Carl Benedikt Frey at Oxford University are forecasting that significant numbers of human workers will lose their jobs to robots over the next decade or two. Some scaremongers are even going so far as to predict that robots will do all jobs in the not-so-distant future. These predictions are enough to make people wonder: Will restaurant managers be needed in the future? Or will robots start performing all restaurant management jobs sometime soon? Increasing numbers of fast food and fast-casual restaurants are revamping their dining experiences to install digital kiosks where customers can order their own food instead of interacting with cashiers. This is happening at the major chains like McDonald’s and Taco Bell, according to various sources including RevelSystems.com and OCRegister.com. Many of the smaller fast-food and fast-casual restaurant chains are expected to follow suit. Logically, you might think that the rise of digital kiosks would lead to the elimination of cashier’s jobs and possibly even a need for fewer restaurant managers. So far it has not worked out that way at all. It seems that the digital kiosks in the fast food industry are not actually eliminating jobs. Rather, the workers who used to be cashiers are being reassigned to other duties such as providing table service. Entrepreneur.com has revealed that some fast-casual and fast food restaurants with these digital technologies have even ended up needing to employ more human workers. This is because their overall businesses have grown. Some of the increase is due to the fact that customers are ordering more food and creating increasingly customized orders as a result of the digital kiosks. Business is also increasing due to new mobile apps that allow customers to place orders on their smart devices. Robots are still unable to perform tasks like managing employees. They can’t negotiate,  joke and laugh with customers. Nobody can forecast long-term future career planning with 100 percent certainty these days. But it seems that restaurant managers’ jobs are quite secure for the foreseeable future. Growing numbers of employees to supervise means there’s likely to be a need for more restaurant managers, just as the experts at the Bureau of Labor Statistics predict. Therefore we’re delighted to report that the future restaurant management job outlook is quite favorable.

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Brenda Rufener
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Julie McCaulley
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Carrie Sealey-Morris
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