Las Vegas jobless rate falls, but not from economic rebound
Las Vegas’ jobless rate dipped last month, a new report shows, but not because the local economy suddenly hit the gas.
The Las Vegas-area’s unemployment rate was 5.6 percent in August, down from 6 percent in July, according to a report this week from the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation.
America’s casino capital has been grappling this year with a drop in tourism, the region’s main economic engine, and shed thousands of jobs last month, state officials recently reported. So how did the jobless rate fall?
David Schmidt, chief economist with DETR, explained that it boils down to how labor-market data is collected and reported.
Metro-level jobless rates are not seasonally adjusted, he said, meaning the figures are not stripped of normal seasonal fluctuations.
California’s Employment Development Department, for instance, explains that some industries have large fluctuations in headcount at certain times of the year, including ski resorts, schools and retailers.
Schmidt also said that Las Vegas’ labor force dropped by more than 2,000 from July to August and that this tends to push down the jobless rate, due to how it’s calculated.
People who leave the labor market and stop looking for work are no longer counted among the unemployed.
Meanwhile, the employment figures that DETR recently reported — and that showed a month-to-month drop of 4,300 in Las Vegas — were seasonally adjusted.
In that report, Schmidt said Nevada’s labor market is “largely stationary.”
Overall, Las Vegas’ jobless rate has been hovering among the highest in the country for big metro areas. But as Las Vegas consultant John Restrepo recently pointed out, it’s not at crisis levels.
In 2010, after Las Vegas’ frenzied real estate market crashed and the U.S. financial system cratered, Southern Nevada’s unemployment rate reached nearly 14 percent.
And in April 2020, during the first full month of the pandemic shutdowns, when the Strip was a ghost town and tourism had all but stopped, Las Vegas’ jobless rate skyrocketed to 34 percent.
Still, Restrepo, founder of RCG Economics, noted that the local economy is cooling off.
“Everything is flattening,” he said.
Restrepo cited Las Vegas’ sliding visitor totals and said the region’s heavy dependence on tourism to fuel the economy can slow hiring in other sectors due to the drop-off.
Around 22.6 million people visited Las Vegas this year through July, down 8 percent, or a drop of almost 2 million people, from the same seven-month stretch last year, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com