Once again, Nevada is tops in job growth

Friday, July 18, 1997 | 12:37 p.m.

According to the Blue Chip Job Growth Update published by the Economic Outlook Center at Arizona State University, the state in April had the top percentage change in job growth and Las Vegas was No. 1 among the nation's major metropolitan areas. Again.

The story has been the same since 1994.

In the most recent update, Nevada reported providing 885,200 jobs in April, an increase of 55,900 over the 829,300 reported in April 1996. The 6.74 percent increase was the best among the 50 states, nearly 2 percent more than No. 2 Arizona's 4.96 percent increase and about three times as much as the U.S. average of 2.26 percent.

Economists watching the statistics concur that there's no way Nevada will be able to maintain such a boom, but in the immediate future, there's no obvious candidate to supplant Las Vegas and Nevada as the leaders in their respective categories.

"When you get bigger, it's harder to sustain the momentum," said Keith Schwer, director and professor of economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Although the construction industry gets the credit for providing the thousands of jobs being added in Southern Nevada, the gambling industry is behind the construction push.

The question of whether job growth will be maintained can be translated to "Will people keep visiting the city's resort properties?"

"The national economy has been pretty good," Schwer said. "A downturn in the national economy would be one thing that would bring our expansion to a close."

But Schwer says there has been only one recessionary period in the last 15 years. Inflation, according to this week's cost-of-living reports, is in check and the stock market continues to perform at record levels.

"Gaming revenue had been flat earlier this year," Schwer said, "but it seems to be picking up again. It looks like it's going to continue to pick up over the rest of the year."

Schwer said that while the boom period has been generated by the gambling industry, Southern Nevada's overall economy has become stabilized, particularly when the Las Vegas area cleared the 1 million population plateau.

Since 1 million is a magic number triggering development response from some retailers, a retail boom rode on the resort industry's strength.