Report: Quarterly Southern Nevada indicators trail averages

The easy gains are behind Las Vegas.

Now, the hard work begins.

That‘s the takeaway from a Monday report of think tank Brookings Mountain West, whose quarterly Mountain Monitor showed a slowdown in economic improvements across the Las Vegas Valley even as the rest of the Intermountain West picked up steam.

From job growth to economic output, first-quarter indicators in Southern Nevada underperformed both the region and recent averages, Brookings‘ analysis found.

"Many of the gains just from catching up and bouncing back may be exhausted, especially with job gains," said Kenan Fikri, a Brookings senior policy analyst and associate fellow. "The region now needs to start the slower work of diversifying the economic base and building a lasting foundation for higher-value, sustainable economic development that comes from increasing skills in the population."

To see why Southern Nevada may need new growth strategies, consider how its economic performance faltered.

Job growth in the fourth quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015 ranged from 0.4 percent to 0.5 percent, Brookings‘ figures showed. That‘s roughly half the rate of the 0.8 percent to 0.9 percent gain across the Intermountain West.

Local unemployment ticked up by a tenth of a point, to 7.2 percent in the first quarter, as the labor force grew. Regionally, joblessness dipped 0.3 percent, to an average of 4.8 percent.

And Southern Nevada‘s economic output — the value of goods and services produced — gained 0.1 percent in the first quarter, after slipping 0.2 percent in the fourth quarter. Regional output improved 0.2 percent in the first quarter and 0.7 percent in the fourth.

The analysis found other causes for concern.

The city‘s jobs base has grown nearly 12 percent since its 2011 bottom. Output has expanded at a weaker 5 percent — a sign that though locals are returning to work, the work they‘re doing may pay less or come with fewer hours, Fikri said.

The local numbers are troublesome because in general, the Intermountain West, which includes big cities in Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico and Utah, outperformed the nation in the first quarter, with job growth and unemployment improving at twice the U.S. rate thanks to better weather and more tech-oriented economies, Fikri said.

But without a solid core of jobs in technology and advanced manufacturing, Las Vegas was shut out of some of that growth.

"Las Vegas is still having what we would call a recovery. It‘s just really slowed down," Fikri said. "It‘s being exposed that Las Vegas hasn‘t experienced as much of a high-road recovery as it needs to. The imperative now is increasing the quality of jobs and value of industries Las Vegas is engaged in. That means investing in assets that might help grow advanced industries locally."

Contact Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com. Find @J_Robison1 on Twitter.