by Toni Irizarry recognizes that the economy has improved. Compared to the first wave of the pandemic, when Las Vegas went dark and unemployment soared to levels not seen since the Great Depression, these are days of relative normality.
Irizarry, 64, oversees a coffee shop at the Orleans Hotel and Casino, a property just off the Las Vegas Strip that primarily serves locals. The guests have returned, filling the blackjack and roulette tables amid the cacophony of the jingling of slot machines – the sound of money.
He started in the hospitality industry bussing tables when he was just 16 years old. His salary allowed him to buy a house, raise three children, and buy each of them his first car. But as he contemplates the future, he can’t help but feel a sense of foreboding.
The perspective of people like Irizarry could be crucial in determining who occupies the White House. Nevada is one of six battleground states that will likely decide the outcome of November’s presidential election. Its economic center, Las Vegas, was built on dreams of easy money. That turned out to be a winning proposition for generations of workers, generating middle-class salaries for waiters, restaurant servers, casino dealers and maids. However, over the past two decades, a series of shocks have eroded trust.
First, a speculative real estate boom went spectacularly wrong, turning the city into the epicenter of a national foreclosure crisis. The Great Recession led to heavy layoffs in the hospitality industry, demolishing the notion that gaming was immune to crises. Then, in 2020, the pandemic turned Las Vegas into a ghost town.
“There is that feeling of the unknown,” Irizarry said. “People are afraid. They think, ‘If this could happen, which has never happened before, what else could happen?’”
Political operators assume that the fate of the 2024 presidential election could depend on economic sentiments.
In battleground states, 57 percent of registered voters identified the economy as the most important issue in an October poll by The New York Times and Siena College. More than half of all respondents described economic conditions as “poor,” a key reason President Biden trailed his presumptive Republican rival, former President Donald J. Trump, in five of the six states.
These signs of concern seem to conflict with data that reflects an unequivocal strengthening of the US economy. Incomes have increased, unemployment remains low and consumer confidence is improving. Recession fears have given way to joy over economic growth that registered 3.3 percent in the final three months of 2023. And the Super Bowl, coming to Las Vegas for the first time on Sunday, will bring a short-term boost within up to 700 million dollars to the local economy.
Still, a sense of insecurity has seeped into the cracks of everyday experience. This sentiment is especially palpable in Nevada, a state that relies on a single industry (resort casinos and hospitality) for about a quarter of its jobs.
In Nevada, 59 percent of respondents described the economy as “poor,” the highest margin among the six states. Seventeen percent of registered Democrats said they intended to vote for Trump.
The state’s unemployment rate has dropped dramatically, recording 5.4 percent in November, a fraction of the 31 percent recorded in April 2020, even as it remains higher than any other state. Wages have increased, especially for more than 40,000 leisure and hospitality workers represented by a pair of local unions. The inflation rate of a number of consumer goods has slowed noticeably.
But those numbers leave out key sources of angst that are occurring across the country and even globally, and whose origins are not limited to the four-year periods conventionally used to evaluate presidential administrations.
While prices for many goods have stopped rising, they remain higher than before the pandemic, especially for critical items like gasoline, groceries and rent.
Higher interest rates — the result of the Federal Reserve’s tightening of credit to stifle inflation — have increased credit card charges for those carrying balances. They have multiplied mortgage payments for homeowners whose interest payments float with broader rates.
Of particular concern in Nevada is the recognition that potentially lucrative activities such as advanced manufacturing could take years to generate significant numbers of jobs.
For decades, Nevada leaders have sought to decrease the state’s reliance on casinos and tourism. Las Vegas is quickly filling up with warehouses as the metropolitan area emerges as a hub for product distribution. Companies focused on the green energy transition are creating good-paying jobs, especially near Reno.
However, Nevada remains largely dependent on the willingness of people around the world to fly, stay at resorts and convention centers and spread their dollars at casinos, restaurants and entertainment venues. Which makes the company subject to sudden changes in fortune. Which makes people nervous.
“We are still very vulnerable to another recession,” said Andrew Woods, director of the Center for Economics and Business Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “If the U.S. economy decides to spiral out of control, we will be no more resilient than before.”
The tensions of high prices
Much of the unhappiness in Nevada, as in the rest of the country, centers on the high costs of everyday items other than housing.
Antonio Muñoz, a former police officer, owns 911 Taco Bar, a restaurant located inside a food court near the Strip. He laments how the price of chicken has risen to $3.50 a pound from $1.20 before the pandemic. A five-gallon jug of cooking oil has increased from $25 to $60. He has been forced to raise wages to keep his five full-time workers.
Much of his business is dedicated to restoration work. Big events are back with a vengeance, he said. The annual Consumer Electronics Show in early January produced a surge in orders for prime rib and shrimp tacos as technology companies welcomed visitors into private suites. He was preparing for the Super Bowl.
But smaller bookings, particularly birthday parties, declined last year by a fifth compared with 2022. He blames Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, conflict in the Middle East and acrimony over the election. Americans to make people nervous and short of money.
He worries that worry itself could bring down the economy.
“I feel like he’s floundering,” Muñoz said. “People seem to be waiting to see what happens.”
More salary, greater security
One group is celebrating powerful achievements. After threatening to strike, tens of thousands of people represented by the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and the Bartenders Union Local 165 secured a contract agreement that includes 32 percent raises over the next five years.
Union workers played a key role in turning out voters for Biden four years ago, and their higher pay could motivate them to repeat that effort. And given the importance of their salaries in boosting local spending, the new contracts are themselves a source of economic vitality.
Kimberly Dopler has worked as a waitress at Wynn’s Las Vegas for almost 20 years. The work is physically exhausting and fraught with the difficulties of serving clients who “drink and gamble and are not in the right state of mind,” she said. However, she circumvents those risks for the sake of resulting safety.
“I come home with money in my pocket every day, I can take off my shoes and relax,” he said.
The union contract has improved their sense that the economy is strong. “I see a lot of hiring at my job, hiring events all over the city,” Dopler said. “I feel like people have a good opportunity in this city to find work.”
Raymond Luján, 61, a union steward and server at Edge Steakhouse, a restaurant inside Westgate Las Vegas, was born and raised in the city. His mother worked as a waitress at the Stardust. His brother is a bellhop at the Bellagio.
Before the pandemic, Luján had never been without work. When he closed the restaurant where he worked, he dipped into his savings, but many of his co-workers live paycheck to paycheck.
He remains confident in a future focused on the hotel industry.
“This is Las Vegas,” he said. “It remains the destination capital of the world.”
“It’s still difficult”
But for workers who lack the protection of a union, Las Vegas remains something else: an economy subject to violent fluctuations.
Before the pandemic, Carlos Arias, 51, earned more than $2,000 a week as an Uber driver. When the casinos closed, he found work as a cook: first at Denny’s for $13.75 an hour, then at IHOP for 50 cents more.
Suddenly earning only a quarter of their previous income, Mr. Arias and his partner, a McDonald’s manager, struggled to pay the $1,100 monthly rent on their one-bedroom apartment. They used credit cards to keep gas in their car. They cut back on grocery shopping to basics like rice, beans, and instant ramen.
They fell behind on their Cadillac truck payments. One morning, he was gone, he was confiscated.
He found a new job as a cook at a Mexican restaurant for an extra dollar an hour, and then a second job at a restaurant inside the Ellis Island casino. For a year, he worked both jobs, getting up at 4 a.m. for the early shift and sometimes not returning home until after midnight.
He felt dizzy and his vision became blurry. He didn’t know if he was sick or just exhausted and had no health insurance. When he was about to collapse, he went to the hospital and was diagnosed with diabetes. The medication the doctor prescribed cost more than $50 for a 30-day treatment, more than he could afford.
Early last year, he took a job at a restaurant at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino for $19 an hour.
On paper, Mr. Arias presents it as an example of an improving economy. He is earning more than during the worst of the pandemic. He has health insurance and is taking medication for his diabetes.
But he earns less than half of what he earned before the crisis began.
“It’s still difficult,” he said. “You go to the store and buy $100 worth of groceries and there’s nothing in the car.”
