Tourism growth and vulnerable employment in emerging and developing economies

International tourism is widely promoted as a source of employment in developing economies, yet its relationship with employment structure remains less clear. Using annual data for 30 emerging and developing economies from 2000 to 2022, this study examines whether international tourist arrivals are associated with vulnerable employment, self-employment, employment-to-population ratios, unemployment, and sectoral employment. Two-way fixed-effects models are estimated with country-clustered standard errors. Higher lagged tourist arrivals are associated with larger shares of vulnerable employment and self-employment, while no stable association is detected for the employment-to-population ratio, unemployment, service employment, or agricultural employment. The vulnerable-employment result remains positive under alternative tourism measures, country-specific trends, alternative inference procedures, exclusion of the COVID-19 period, and leave-one-country-out tests, but weakens in dynamic and first-difference specifications. The evidence is therefore more consistent with persistent within-country co-movement in employment status than with an immediate causal response to annual tourism shocks. By distinguishing employment absorption from employment formalisation, the study shows why tourism performance should be assessed not only through visitor growth and aggregate job creation, but also through the employment arrangements in which economic activity is organised.