Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2002 | 9:10 a.m.
For Karen Maccanello, life was pretty good as summer was coming to an end last year.
Her two daughters had just gone back to college; Nicole to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Christine to the University of Nevada, Reno. The single parent was working as a graveyard-shift blackjack and minibaccarat dealer at the MGM Grand.
She liked working graveyard -- 4 a.m. to noon -- because it gave her more time to be with her girls. She planned a quick trip to Reno, flying up Monday and returning Tuesday. But she didn't make it home Tuesday, Sept. 11.
"Like everybody else, I couldn't get out and, like everybody else, I was glued to the television set," Maccanello recalled.
She called her supervisors, who understood completely -- they were dealing with customers who were stranded in Las Vegas. She was stuck for four days and finally went back to work Sunday. It was the last day she would be a full-time employee at the MGM for about six months. She was about to be laid off.
"I got the call the following Monday," Maccanello said. "I never saw it coming. I was just cut off at the knees. Never in any of my thoughts had I ever considered that this could affect my job."
She didn't even tell anyone in her family for two days, not wanting them to worry about how she, as the sole source of support, would be able to make ends meet. For Maccanello, the layoff was "more devastating than a divorce."
In some respects, Maccanello's plight was better than many of the estimated 20,000 casino and tourism workers who were laid off vallleywide following the terrorist attacks.
MGM MIRAGE, parent company of the MGM Grand and seven other Las Vegas properties, offered her on-call status, meaning she would be called to work when casino demand warranted it. Within three months she was working four days a week, enough to preserve her benefits. Three months after that, she was back to full-time status.
Maccanello said she never calculated how much money she lost as a result of the layoff, the psychological toll being far more painful than the financial damage. Besides, since much of her income is based on tips, it would be hard to assess what she lost. Most dealers make minimum wage, $5.15 an hour, but take home much more in tokes.
Maccanello said her already frugal ways helped her manage the financial crunch.
"A lot of people had a worse story than me," she said. "I was just grateful to be able to make it back."
MGM MIRAGE spokeswoman Shelley Mansholt said of the 6,200 employees laid off by the company, all but 240 are back on the job or are working somewhere else. She said one-third of the laid-off employees have their original jobs, another one-third had different jobs or their original jobs at reduced hours and the rest have left the company.
Today, as the economy has yet to fully recover, Maccanello and her colleagues have fearful memories of what happened a year ago.
Experts watching for signs of an economic rebound in Southern Nevada since Sept. 11 say other significant events have clouded the big picture. And, they say, there are some encouraging signs.
Statistically, the state is getting stronger in several key categories and the Southern Nevada Index of Leading Economic Indicators, published by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' Center for Business and Economic Research, shows a positive economic trend.
Nevada's unemployment rate fell in July to 5.4 percent -- lower than the national average of 5.9 percent and the June rate of 5.5 percent.
For the first six months of 2002, new-home sales in Las Vegas are up 2.3 percent to 11,033 units, while existing-home sales have climbed 12 percent to 18,617 for the year so far.
Taxable sales in Clark County were down fractionally in June. Local merchants reported $2 billion in sales, off 0.3 percent from the same month in 2001, with drops in building material sales and miscellaneous retail offsetting increases in food stores, auto sales, home furniture, apparel and accessory stores and in restaurants and bars. Statewide, taxable sales were down 1.7 percent from last year to $2.8 billion in June.
Visitor volume also is off from the previous year. Through July 20.3 million passengers have flown into and out of McCarran International Airport, down 6.5 percent from 2001 totals.
That has translated into lower gross gaming revenues. In June, the most recent month for which statistics are available, the gaming win fell 13.8 percent to $339.1 million on the Strip. That contributed to a statewide gaming win of $9.3 billion for the fiscal year that ended in June -- a 3.7 percent decline from the previous year.
That has resulted in a revenue shortfall of $175 million to $180 million for the state, government budget analysts have said.
So what do the statistics tell economists?
Keith Schwer, director of UNLV's economic research center, said the future is bright, despite some of the conflicting numbers.
"The unemployment rate and inflation are down, and that's important," Schwer said. "The matter of taxable sales and gaming revenue are fiscal issues and we're one of over 40 states having fiscal problems. It's the nature of how finance is set up. Revenues in Nevada are fairly cyclical."
Schwer said it's important to note that the state's bid for a turnaround isn't just about a post-Sept. 11 rebound. Other events have contributed to keeping an economic rebound in low gear.
"It's clear now that there really was a recession" in early 2001, Schwer said. "So we were fighting that well before 9-11."
Schwer also looks at the rebound from the terrorist attacks with historical perspective and a very personal remembrance.
"Maybe I'm a little more sensitive to the fact that our country was under attack," said Schwer, who was staying in a hotel at the base of the World Trade Center in anticipation of a speaking engagement on Sept. 11. The hotel was destroyed and Schwer's belongings were lost in the rubble when the buildings collapsed.
"Given the magnitude of an attack on the country, we're doing all right," he said. "Go back and look at World War II. We had just come out of the Depression and everybody was starting to go back to work when that attack occurred. It takes time to come all the way back."
Part of the process includes understanding that other events that have occurred since Sept. 11 are slowing the recovery process.
"Everything has been confounded together," Schwer said of events such as the collapse of Enron, corporate scandals and the weak stock market.
The latest economic detour is the plight of the struggling aviation industry, which clearly has an effect on the fortunes of Las Vegas.
"The national aviation system is a mess," Clark County Aviation Director Randy Walker said. "Outside of Southwest Airlines and JetBlue, everybody's losing money and they were losing money even before 9-11. (The events of) 9-11 just exacerbated the problem."
Walker predicts that to return to profitability, airlines will have to reduce the number of seats to meet demand, including a pullback in Las Vegas.
"I expect we'll see some contraction," Walker said. "But nobody's announced anything yet."
American Airlines, the No. 6 commercial air carrier by capacity at McCarran, has announced pullbacks in regional jet service systemwide, a move that won't have much effect on the Las Vegas market. Other airlines that have said they plan to trim flights and employees are US Airways, United, Northwest and Delta, all of which have Las Vegas flights. National Airlines, which had been in danger of closing, announced last week a financial deal that should keep it in the air.
Walker said other carriers eventually would take up the slack at McCarran if flights were pulled.
"Southwest, the largest carrier here, probably would grow even more and they know how to make money in Las Vegas. Why wouldn't they expand here?" he said. "JetBlue will be here in the fall. Some airlines have done really well here and know how to make money here."
Although Southwest continues to be profitable, the Dallas-based carrier's passenger traffic is off 5.2 percent to 6.3 million in Las Vegas this year. Southwest has been affected by a new post-Sept. 11 phenomenon -- the re-emergence of the automobile as a competitor.
Because of the "hassle factor" at airports, where passengers face longer lines than a year ago, more Southern California tourists are driving to Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said traffic on Interstate 15 is up 10.6 percent through June.
"It will test the capacity of I-15," Walker said. "How much more traffic can I-15 take? More, I'm sure, but how much more?"
Rossi Ralenkotter said the LVCVA had to revamp its marketing and advertising campaign for Las Vegas. Instead of working within a five-year strategic plan, it adopted a series of four-month campaigns, constantly reassessing the market to see how the message was playing.
"We've had to respond to whatever was happening in the marketplace," Ralenkotter said. "It started out with Sept. 11, but we've also had to watch the economy and the stock market, what was happening in corporate America."
Because of the other events that have occurred, the rebound of visitation has been slowed.
"The national tourism companies and organizations are now projecting (domestic tourism) recovery by mid-2003 and international by the end of 2003 or early 2004," Ralenkotter said.
Which proves to people such as Maccanello that they have become vulnerable and won't be able to maintain the same level of confidence in keeping their jobs as they did a year ago.
"For me, the story had a happy ending," Maccanello said. "A lot of people had some really tough times, tougher than what I had.
"It makes me appreciate what I have today and be grateful for my job," she said, "because I'll always keep in mind that you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow."
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