Comment by nonameiguess

It's kind of ironic to me that this is so often the example trotted out. Look at the BLS data sheet for job outlook: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/travel-agents.htm#tab-6

> Employment of travel agents is projected to grow 3 percent from 2023 to 2033, about as fast as the average for all occupations.

The last year there is data for claims 68,800 people employed as travel agents in the US. It's not a boom industry by any means, but it doesn't appear they experienced the apocalypse that Hacker News believes they did, either.

I don't know how to easily find historical data, unfortunately. BLS publishes the excel sheets, but pulling out the specific category would have to be done manually as far as I can tell. There's this, I guess: https://www.travelagewest.com/Industry-Insight/Business-Feat...

It appears at least that what happened is, though it may be easier than ever to plan your own travel, there are so many more people traveling these days than in the past that the demand for travel agents hasn't crashed.