More than one million Indian visitors traveled to the U.S. in 2015 and contributed nearly $11 billion to the American economy. The U.S. government is now working to ensure this number only continues to go up.
U.S. Presidential hopeful Donald Trump has made ‘bringing jobs back to U.S. from China, India’ one of his biggest poll promises. But the flow of dollars is not a one-way street.
More than one million Indian visitors traveled to the U.S. in 2015 and contributed nearly $11 billion or approximately Rs 76,000 crore to the American economy, U.S. Ambassador to India, Richard Verma revealed recently.
Moreover, the number of Indians visiting the United States annually has doubled since 2009, at a time when the developed world is just about emerging from difficult economic times. The U.S. now wants to further double the number of Indians visiting U.S. by 2021.
Moreover, the number of Indian students in the United States last year touched 130,000, the highest number ever and is now projected to go up to 200,000 in coming years.
In 2015, for the first time in history, the U.S. Mission in India processed more than 1 million non-immigrant visa applications in a single year. The U.S. and India also agreed to become Travel & Tourism Partner Countries for 2017 to support U.S.-India trade in travel and tourism services.
Ambassador Verma drove home the point, aimed at perhaps those who have had a difficult visa experience. “We are proud of this milestone, and of the message that it sends: the United States is open for business and tourism and is committed to an efficient, fair, and transparent visa process.”
Incidentally, over 1.2 million American visitors came to India as well, accounting for 15% of total foreign travelers.
Travel & Tourism
Though less glamorous than compared to, say, information technology, travel & tourism is one of the largest industries in the United States. The tourism industry contributed $1.47 trillion to US GDP in 2014. The aim is to take this up to $2.2 trillion by 2025.
This means that the total contribution of travel & tourism to the American jobs market was 9.3% of total employment (13,652,500 jobs). This was projected to rise by 1.7% in 2015 to 13,885,000 jobs.
It’s The Services, You See
The U.S. focus on a strong service-led economy which accounts for two-thirds of the U.S. economy continues to create jobs. Terrorism, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global recession hit the economy hard and the jobs market from 2008 to 2013 remained largely flat.
A free-fall in oil prices has also shrunk employment in U.S.’s energy sector. The oil and gas extraction industry saw the number of jobs decline by nearly 15,000 in 2015, or about 7.5 percent.
The service-led sectors, however has shown strong growth consistently. In fact the top six sectors that added jobs to the U.S. economy were service-led.
According to a report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the educational services sector added 90,000 jobs in the last one year alone.
In contrast, In India, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), the travel and tourism sector contributed $120 billion or 6.3% to India’s GDP, supporting approximately 37 million jobs.
Finally, for the next million travellers, the US and India are working towards India's participation in the Global Entry program, which will expedite travel for pre-approved, low-risk air travelers. "We are currently working on the technical arrangements to bring this program online for Indian travelers," Ambassador Verma said.