Building, casino job losses fuel jobless rate

By Nicole Lucht (contact), In Business reporter

Fri, Mar 27, 2009 (2 a.m.)

The construction and hospitality industries continued shedding jobs in February, and over the last year, have experienced massive cuts to employment, the state’s employment department announced.

While Las Vegas’ unemployment rate increased slightly from 10 percent in January to 10.1 percent in February, the statewide rate increased from 9.4 percent in January to 10.1 percent in February.

Since February 2008, jobs in the construction sector dropped 13.7 percent; with major job losses to contractors in building finishing (down 20.8 percent), foundation and exterior (18.2 percent) and building construction (15.9 percent).

Jobs in leisure and hospitality also had a significant year-over-year decline, with casino hotels and gaming shedding 7.4 percent of their employment base.

Despite all of the problems in the hospitality industry, there have been some much publicized openings in Southern Nevada, Bill Anderson, chief economist of the Employment Department’s research and analysis division. The most recent opening was M Resort, on the southern end of the Las Vegas Strip.

“Although (casino openings) didn’t offset the job decline elsewhere in the industry, nonetheless, (the openings were) a positive,” Anderson said.

CityCenter, the massive Strip property, is expected to open later this year, offering jobs to 10,000 workers.

“At a minimum, (new properties) will continue to offset some of the job losses elsewhere, whether it turns the job situation in that industry to a positive, we’ll just have to see how things unfold,” Anderson said.

Employment services, although an industry smaller in scope in Las Vegas, lost 31.8 percent of its jobs since last February.

The last time Nevada’s jobless rate soared as high was in May 1983, nearly 26 years ago. In terms of the recession in the early 1980s and the current recession’s impact on the economy, their impacts on labor markets are very similar, Anderson said.

“You have to go back to the early 80s to see the kind of unemployment that we’re seeing here right now,” Anderson said. “It was a recessionary time for the economy as a whole and Nevada was feeling the impacts of that recession back then as we are now. It was a rather severe recession.”

Most industries in Las Vegas lost jobs over the past year; however, health care and education jobs grew overall by 4 percent. The hospital subsector increased jobs by 4.7 percent, and jobs in ambulatory health care services were up 3.2 percent.

Jobs in air transportation and warehousing grew by 8.6 percent, even though other jobs in the transportation industry fell. Transit and ground passenger fell by 3.9 percent and taxi and limousine services dropped by 2 percent.

Government had limited growth, up by 0.8 percent between federal (0.9 percent), state (2.9 percent) and local (0.3 percent) government jobs.

Nevada has the option of accessing $70 million in federal stimulus money to boost the state’s unemployment fund. In the state legislature, the Assembly Ways and Means committee has approved a bill to accept the funds, expected to be passed by March 27, reported the Las Vegas Sun, a sister publication of In Business Las Vegas.

Gov. Jim Gibbons supports part of the federal plan, which would expand jobless benefits for seven weeks from the existing 33 weeks. The governor has not decided whether he would support the bill that would require changes to the state’s unemployment rules by making more jobless workers eligible for the state aid.