Ever since Nevada’s casinos shut down in March 2020 for approximately 80 days, the state’s heavily gaming-dependent labor market has been very much in flux.
Thousands of workers were furloughed or laid off due to Covid, and thousands more left the industry altogether for better hopes elsewhere in what has since been termed as the nationwide Great Resignation.
However, once casinos opened back up, the profits started to roll in at record rates, propelling the state to post several all-time best revenue figures over the past 18 or so months.
But as that success starts to cool off amid fears of an upcoming economic recession, the same labor questions have started to resurface again. Workers and unions are demanding wage and benefit increases, which could inflict some pain on operators’ bottom lines if revenues continue to slide.
Earlier this year, the Venetian and Palazzo resorts became the last Strip properties to sign neutrality agreements with local unions, and the Culinary Union specifically is expected to reach new record-setting contracts with several of the most prominent operators in the state by the end of the year, including MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment and Wynn Resorts.
According to the latest round of available labor statistics, Nevada posted an unemployment rate of 5.4 percent in June, the third consecutive month at that figure. That said, Nevada has also led the nation in job growth, most recently posting a 4 percent increase year-over-year.
In an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Marchele Sneed, employment security division manager at the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation (DETR), said that other industries in the state have benefited from former hospitality workers migrating to other jobs.
As a result of this increased competition, Sneed and others have warned that the hospitality industry could experience even higher levels of turnover than years past, thanks to more competitive and steady offers elsewhere.
This also applies to jobs within the hospitality sector, as many labor experts expect the level of “resort hopping” to increase substantially as workers search for the most compelling opportunities.
Notably, the trend happens to coincide with the opening of several new venues in the city, which will flood the market with thousands of new positions—for example, the MSG Sphere venue has said it will hire as many as 3,000 workers for its September opening, the long-awaited Fontainebleau is expected to hire some 5,000 non-management workers before the end of the year and Red Rock Resorts’ latest project, Durango Station, has allotted some 1,500 openings for its late-November launch.
When analyzing the glut of upcoming openings, Sneed told the Review-Journal that a lot of workers will “leave their current positions and go to the new, better, more luxurious resort. We’ll also see a lot of people doing part-time work, where they’re actually trying to supplement their income, like if they have their own job or their own company.”
Conversely, operators are also having to adapt their hiring practices to keep pace with the market.
Becky Smith, vice president of talent acquisition for MGM Resorts, told the Review-Journal that the company is “pivoting and flexing our strategy based off of what we’re seeing two to three months out a time.”
According to Smith, the company now holds hiring events on a weekly basis for the most high-turnover positions, as opposed to a few per year prior to 2020. The main reason for doing so, she said, was that applicants indicated that they wanted on-the-spot offers. The new strategy appears to be working, as MGM now has approximately 2,500 open positions compared to 5,000 a year ago.
