By Eric Neugeboren / The Nevada Independent
The latest data from Nevada’s Economic Forum tells a story that campaign ads on both sides rarely capture accurately: Nevada’s economy is steady, growing, and outpacing expectations.
At a Tuesday meeting of the Economic Forum — the panel of private sector officials responsible for making major state budget decisions — financial experts confirmed that Nevada surpassed its revenue projections by approximately $165 million from last July through April. Even accounting for technical adjustments in tax collection timing, the state is running roughly $60 million ahead of where economists expected it to be, or about one percent above the annual budget baseline.
That is not a dramatic headline number, but it is exactly the kind of quiet, sustained fiscal health that pro-business policy is designed to produce.
The good news does not stop there. Nevada has now led the nation in job growth for ten consecutive months. In the year leading up to March, jobs in Nevada grew at the fastest rate in the country — more than double the pace of the next highest state. Nevada ranked first nationally in job growth across multiple sectors, including manufacturing, business services, and private education.
Perhaps most encouraging for Nevada’s long-term economic story is the continued diversification of the state’s economy. While Nevada still claims the highest share of leisure and hospitality employment of any state, that share has declined more than in any other state over the past decade. The state is no longer a one-industry economy, and the data is beginning to reflect that reality in a meaningful way.
Nevada’s gaming percentage fees, which account for roughly 15 percent of total state revenues, are also slightly ahead of the prior year. Sales and use tax revenues — the number that caused economists the most concern when they revised projections downward last year amid fears of a Trump-era trade slowdown — came in more than seven percent above the same period last year.
“Recent trends in the state’s two largest economically sensitive revenue sources have shown some improvement,” said Susanna Powers, a deputy fiscal analyst for the Legislative Counsel Bureau. “This may cautiously suggest that tourism-related activity in Las Vegas has improved somewhat compared to earlier in this fiscal year.”
The unemployment rate of 5.3 percent remains higher than most states, though Nevada’s labor force participation rate fares considerably better by comparison. As state economist David Schmidt put it: “Five percent unemployment is not a number that I look at and feel a lot of trepidation. I like to say that it’s higher than other states, but it’s not high.”
For Keystone Corporation and the businesses we represent, this data is a validation of what pro-growth, low-regulation, no-new-taxes governance can produce. Nevada is not coasting — it is building. The policies that have made Nevada one of the most competitive business environments in the Western United States are showing up in the numbers, and that is a story worth telling.