Las Vegas jobless rate dips below 10% for first time since pandemic

Las Vegas’ jobless rate has fallen below double digits, albeit barely, for the first time since the pandemic shut off much of the economy a year ago.

But in tourism-dependent Southern Nevada, the share of unemployed workers still is far above other areas of the state.

An estimated 9.9 percent of the Las Vegas area’s workforce was unemployed in January, down from 10.4 percent in December, the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation, or DETR, reported Wednesday.

By comparison, the Reno area’s unemployment rate was 4.9 percent in January, and Carson City’s was 5.6 percent, the department said.

The coronavirus outbreak sparked soaring job losses nationwide last year and kept people home and away from crowds for fear of getting infected, devastating the tourism industry, the bedrock of Las Vegas’ casino-heavy economy.

At one point, 1 in every 3 people in the valley was out of work after the pandemic hit. Southern Nevada has since recouped many of the jobs it lost, though as the new figures show, it lags other parts of the state that don’t rely as heavily on tourism to fuel the local economy.

Early last year before the pandemic hit, around 28 percent of the Las Vegas area’s labor market worked in leisure and hospitality, compared with 15 percent in the Reno area, state data shows.

DETR chief economist David Schmidt said in a news release last week on statewide employment that “ongoing significant disruption” is “highly concentrated in the Las Vegas area.”

News that vaccines should be widely available by the end of May is “encouraging and brings hope of a stronger rebound later this year,” he said, but the coming months “are likely to remain challenging.”

Las Vegas’ jobless rate, just 3.9 percent at the start of 2020, shot up to 34 percent in April after Gov. Steve Sisolak ordered casinos and other Nevada businesses closed to help contain the spreading coronavirus.

Resorts and other businesses have since reopened, putting waves of people back to work, but Las Vegas’ unemployment rate in December still was the highest in the nation among large metro areas, federal officials reported.

The valley’s unemployment rate in January was below 10 percent for the first time since March 2020, at 7.2 percent, federal data shows. State officials said last spring that March’s rate was calculated the week before “nonessential” businesses closed in Nevada.

Overall, the fallout from the outbreak marks the second time in a decade that Southern Nevada was among the hardest-hit areas of the country during a global economic crisis and, analysts say, was yet another reminder that Las Vegas needs to better diversify its employer base and become less dependent on casinos and leisure spending.

For now, the valley’s economic recovery could gain more momentum as people continue to get vaccinated and COVID-19 infection rates fall, potentially spurring more travel after a year of people staying at home.

Stephen Miller, director of UNLV’s Center for Business and Economic Research, told the Review-Journal recently that there is big demand among people to travel and have some fun.

“Las Vegas is a good location to do that,” he said.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.