(The Center Square) – Amidst a housing crisis and economic toll across the nation, Nevada’s job market has stayed relatively steady.
The state has not grown its job market in the past year, while the unemployment rate looks about the same as it has for the past couple years.
“The overall labor market picture in Nevada is really pretty flat,” said David Schmidt, chief economist with the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation.
“We’re not really adding jobs; we’re not losing jobs,” Schmidt told The Center Square. “For the last couple years, it’s been at about the same range.”
Back in the 1990s, Nevada underwent a population boom, and by extension, a labor market boom. As Nevada – and the country – have slowed in population growth, there’s been a stagnation in the jobs market.
“ Pick a random month five years from now, and I would say, ‘Yeah, we’ll probably be seeing less than one percent [job] growth’ which for Nevada is different,” said Schmidt.
By contrast, the 1990s regularly saw 3-6% year-over-year job market growth.
But even if the job market remains stagnant for years or decades to come, Schmidt explained that increased productivity through technological advances means it should not necessarily be cause for alarm.
“You have this tension between human physical growth and productivity growth that can help allow the economy to continue to expand,” said Schmidt.
He added that while there was no significant total job market growth from this August report to last year’s, tens of thousands of people were still being hired per month – the same as retired, were let go, fired or otherwise left the workforce.
The August unemployment rate fell 0.1 percent from July to 5.3 percent – what Schmidt would call within the standard range. “For the last couple of years… we continue to be right there.”
The rate means, though, that Nevada has the second-highest unemployment rate among any of the 50 states. The highest rate, 5.5%, is in California, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
