Jobs in tourism are important for many localities large and small, and in many contexts they provide one of the very few employment opportunities. Nevertheless, considerable criticism exists concerning tourism-dependent jobs. Observers argue that these jobs are poorly paid, semi-skilled or unskilled, temporary, highly feminized and with limited career opportunities. Low salaries and poor benefits (combined with long hours and little appreciation) ensure that a large army of tourism workers have minimal incentives to stay on in their present job. Tourism workers might, depending on the spatial but also their individual socio-economic context, either "stay where they are" or choose to exit. This paper (the first of two papers in the session) will be based on a literature review aiming to give an overview of what we understand about the people working in this sector in general, and more specifically what we know and do not know about tourism workers in Sweden (in terms of age, sex, ethnicity, education, previous occupations, geographical and sectoral mobility etc). A presentation of a lifecycle perspective of Sweden's tourism workers will be offered.