New government figures show that cargo airlines are adding jobs while passenger airlines have made deep cuts during the coronavirus pandemic. The Transportation Department said Tuesday that the airline industry employed 713,949 people full-time or part-time in January. That’s up about 19,000 jobs from December but still well below employment levels in early 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S. Passenger airlines have been barred from laying off workers as a condition of billions in federal payroll aid, but they have pushed thousands of workers to quit or take early retirement. Delta employs nearly 28,000 fewer people than it did in January 2020, a drop of nearly one-third.
