Airline industry continues to hire

The U.S. airline industry has been on a hiring trend lately, but don’t expect that to continue too much longer.

For the ninth straight month, the airline industry added full-time employees in August, with employment numbers up 2.8% from the same month last year, according to the U.S. Transportation Department’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

In August, commercial passenger airlines employed 388,523 full-time workers in the U.S., up 10,688 workers from August 2010, according to the bureau.

But the long-term trends show the industry is still below its peak of nearly 420,000 workers in early 2008. And in the last few weeks, airline executives have said they would cut back on flights and available seats in response to higher fuel prices and decreasing demand.

The biggest employment growth was among low-cost airlines, such as Virgin America, Spirit and JetBlue, which combined increased employment nearly 6% over August 2010. Continental Airlines reported 9.2% more full-time employees last August than in August 2010, the largest increase among the large carriers, according to the bureau.

California-based Virgin America hired 21.2% more full-time workers, the largest increase among low-cost airlines. Virgin America, which launched in 2007 with a handful of routes, has continued to grow, adding routes in the last year from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Palm Springs, Chicago, Dallas and Cancun, Mexico.

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