Santa Fe Station dealer William Oakes works the blackjack table Wednesday. A report from the Nevada Department of Employment, Training & Rehabilitation suggests casino dealers will be in high demand statewide over the next seven years. Photo by Craig L. Moran.

As a New Yorker, William Oakes didn't lead a glamorous professional life.

While Oakes moved from job to job in grocery stores and factories, Oakes' brother, a Las Vegas gaming dealer, would report back East with interesting details of life on the casino floor.

So two years ago, Oakes decided to join his brother as a gaming dealer in Southern Nevada, first at the Fiesta Henderson and then at Santa Fe Station, both properties under the Station Casinos umbrella.

"I always thought (dealing) would be a cool kind of job," Oakes said. "It has a lot of excitement."

Oakes' career decision will bring him major job security to go with all that fun, if a report from the Nevada Department of Employment, Training & Rehabilitation is any signal.

The department has released its "Hot 50" list of the occupations that will experience the most demand through 2014 in Nevada, and gaming dealers naturally have one of the hottest jobs out there.

Jim Shabi, an economist with the department, said the agency's researchers weighed positions that would have more openings than average or that paid more than average. The department tracks data on more than 500 occupations, and it breaks jobs into three categories: positions that require at least a bachelor's degree; posts that require moderate-term education such as long-term, on-the-job training, an associates degree or postsecondary vocational schooling; and short-term, on-the-job training.

The department assembles the list to help Nevadans understand where the long-range job opportunities are, and how their skills might match the coming needs of the state's employers.

The department's research shows that eight of the 10 fastest-growing jobs in Nevada over the next seven years are in the short-term-training category, including waiting tables, running cash registers, cleaning commercial buildings and moving freight. The two remaining occupations, carpenter and gaming dealer, are in the moderate-term training segment.

Generally high turnover among lower-skilled jobs will partly drive the greater volume of future openings in occupations such as food service and housekeeping, Shabi said.

"People often use these jobs as (career) steppingstones," Shabi said.

Also, several high-growth occupations are dominated by part-time workers, which creates a greater volume of jobs, Shabi said.

For gaming dealers and carpenters, the growth will come from an unrelenting development boom in the resort sector. The Las Vegas Sands Corp.'s $1.8 billion Palazzo will open late this year, and the $1.7 billion Encore at Wynn Las Vegas will follow in 2008. MGM Mirage's $7 billion Project CityCenter is scheduled for completion in 2009. In all, the Las Vegas market alone will add about 41,000 hotel rooms by 2011.

Nevada economists said the high concentration of lower-skilled jobs among fast-growing occupations wasn't a cause for concern.

"That's a reflection of what our economy is," Shabi said. "When leisure and hospitality make up 29 percent of all jobs, that's where you're going to see the most job openings. Every jurisdiction in the world is competing for high-tech science jobs. We certainly want to see those numbers get bigger at the top of the chart (where the high-skilled posts are), but this is where we are right now."

Keith Schwer, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said Nevada has a higher share of lower-skill jobs when compared with technology-oriented economies such as those in California.

But Nevada's job base in travel and tourism is the envy of many other communities, Schwer said. In Michigan, for example, a flagging domestic car-manufacturing industry pushed unemployment up to 7.1 percent in December, an increase of nearly half a percent from December 2005. To help reduce joblessness, Michigan's officials are working to encourage the addition of leisure-sector jobs, he said.

"They think that is an area they can compete in," Schwer said.

And entry-level, service-sector jobs also pay far better in Las Vegas than they do in other markets, Schwer noted. A U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics study from 2005 found that Nevada ranks No. 4 nationally in the median pay its maids earn. Housekeepers in the Silver State typically take home $22,410 a year, compared with a national median of $17,000. Heavy union presence in leisure-related fields also means many lower-skilled workers have lucrative benefits packages that include perks such as full health-care coverage, unlike their counterparts in many other states.

Schwer pointed again to the trajectory of Michigan's dominant employment sector for a cautionary note.

Like Michigan's automakers, Nevada's tourism industry is facing increasing competition from global markets. Car manufacturers haven't been quick to embrace the leaner business models that their international competitors follow, and Michigan's auto industry has shed about 300,000 jobs since 2000 as a result, Schwer said.

"It's going to be hard for us to always be No. 1 in travel and tourism," he said. "We have a unique situation here, and we're in a very good position that will not last forever. The implication would be that you would have an economy that would not be growing, and you would have a large portion of the population at a relatively low income. They could be vulnerable to an economic decline."

Schwer said the state's primary- and secondary-school systems can meet the needs of Nevada's work force by "educating people for changes."

"What one does today in terms of hospitality is a heck of a lot different than it was 30 or 40 years ago," he said. "The technology is very different. The important thing is to educate people who are flexible, and who have an entrepreneurial spirit that will help them grow and adjust to changes in the future."

Though work as a gaming dealer doesn't require complex, advanced education, it's hardly a dead-end job. Just ask Oakes, who said his experience with the job base in Las Vegas has been superior to his professional experiences in New York state.

Before he moved to Las Vegas from New York, Oakes held a succession of what he said were personally unfulfilling jobs. He worked for several years in the produce department of a grocery store, and also put in time as a machine operator at a Fiberglas factory. Constant heavy lifting and 12-hour shifts prevailed.

"I've had enough bad jobs to know I didn't want another one," he said.

Dealing craps and blackjack has been a welcome change.

"I like dealing to the locals. You see the same faces every day, and you're on a first-name basis with all the people who come in," he said. "It's almost like you become friends with them. We have a lot of fun."

Based on his first two years as a dealer, Oakes has started planning his career arc. He knows the sheer demand for dealers in Las Vegas would make it easier for him to find another job. But he isn't interested right now in dealing on the Strip, and he said he loves working for Station Casinos.

"I think this might be it for me," Oakes said. "I'll spend a few more years dealing and running more games. Station will let you learn whatever you want. Who knows? Maybe 10 years down the road I'll be a shift manager. This is definitely a good career."