Is Nevada really the gold state?

The price for gold, which is set on a global market, closed at $3,383 per ounce on Friday, a good sign for Nevada. In fact, if Nevada was a country, it would be the fifth largest gold producer in the world, behind China, Russia, Australia and Canada.

“When you think of Nevada, you think of casinos, but I guarantee the average Nevadan has no idea that we have some of the biggest gold mines on Earth sitting just off the I-80,” said Andrew Martin, assistant professor of economic geology at UNLV.

Around $9.7 billion of minerals were mined out of the ground last year in the state, said Simon Jowitt, Nevada geologist and director of the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, from the United States Geological Survey, the majority being gold.

So, how important is gold to Nevada’s economy? And how did Nevada strike gold, literally?

Gold’s importance to the Nevada economy

In Nevada, mining is a $12 billion industry, said Amanda Hilton, president of the Nevada Mining Association. Nevada has multiple mineral deposits, including silver, lithium and barium, but gold is the MVP. It’s not only used in jewelry, which is its most popular use, but also in technology such as in the chips inside our phones.

Nevada has around 30 active gold mines and some of the largest in the world, with the majority operated by Nevada Gold Mines, a joint venture between Newmont Corp. and Barrick Gold Corp.

“We’ve been mining gold in a significant way since the 1980s,” Hilton said. “Mining is a historical industry. It’s the reason that Nevada became a state to start with.”

As a whole, gold accounts for 6 percent of the state’s entire gross domestic product, Jowitt said.

Mining pays every tax a normal Nevada business would but also pays two mining-specific taxes: net proceeds of minerals tax and the mining education tax, which the only industry specific tax that goes directly into the education fund for the state of Nevada, Hilton said

In 2023, which is the latest data available, the net proceeds of minerals tax generated $237.5 million and the mining education tax generated $62.5 million, according to Nevada Mining Association.

Annually, Nevada pulls around 3 million ounces of gold out of the ground, but some years, like 2017, it can be as high as 5 million, according to NVMA.

Mining workforce in Nevada

Where gold makes its largest impact is in its workforce. Mining employs around 35,000 people and is in every county in Nevada, but the majority is in rural eastern Nevada, in places such as Elko, Eureka, White Pine and Lander County, Martin said.

In fact, if mining was not so prolific, places like Winnemucca or Elko may not even exist, Martin said.

Martin said it is hard to isolate an exact number of gold-specific mining workers due to ancillary work.

NGM employs around 7,000 people directly, with the number consistently increasing with new ventures like Goldrush Mine, which opened in 2024 and has a 24-year life, Martin said. NGM also has 4,000 contractors.

“You don’t actually get that much money from mining directly,” he said. “The value to Nevada is the amount of people that the mining employs.”

This is because wages are so high for miners. For gold and silver mining specifically, workers make on average $118,000 annually, according to a 2024 report from Nevada Mining Association. That’s $9.9 billion in wages.

Still more to come

Even with the astronomical amount of gold being dug up, Nevada is still largely underexplored.

“In terms of total reserves, we have something like 60 million ounces of reserves in the ground. So, ounces of gold that are very likely to be dug up,” Jowitt said. “In terms of resources, we have even more. We have 218 million ounces of gold in resources which have a reasonable chance of being extracted economically.”

And the value of gold only continues to go up.

“These numbers are preliminary, but basically, Nevada produced less ounces of gold last year compared to 2023, but we actually produced more value,” Jowitt said.

Gold has long been seen as a recession-proof resource, with people flocking to it during times of uncertainty. With recent changes in administration and stock market volatility, gold is “comfortable” for people, Martin at UNLV said.

“Gold is, is gold, right? You can physically have a gold bar if you’re worrying that your stocks are going to crash,” Martin said. “People feel safe with it.”

Contact Emerson Drewes at edrewes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @EmersonDrewes on X.