There's money outdoors, or so claims the Outdoor Industry Association. On Wednesday, the association released a report pegging U.S. outdoor recreation in 2011 as a $646 billion business employing 6.1 million Americans -- or about three times the number of workers in the oil and gas industry and nearly twice as many as in the education industry.
But then, as a report from the association notes, outdoor recreation is made up of many different businesses beyond traditional hunting, fishing and camping. Consider these: bicycling, motorcycling, water sports, skiing, snowmachining and all-terrain vehicle activities to name a few.
The numbers are also skewed a bit by the $120.7 billion spent on apparel, footwear, vehicles and other so-called "outdoor'' goods. The Alaska cruise ship passenger who buys a Patagonia puffy coat to keep herself warm on a voyage to Alaska is contributing to the outdoor recreation economy. But that cruise passenger, as a lot of Alaska small business people know, is also contributing to the big motor driving the outdoor economy, so-called "trips and travel."
Guides, lodges, rental business, charters and the like all survive on the more than $525 billion the industry generated last year. Business, the association says, grew even as the nation continued to struggle to emerge from a recession. Sometimes, maybe, there are extra reasons people want to escape to the outdoors.