Tourism is softening.

Costs are still climbing, but some economic signals are improving.

So what does it all mean for Nevada?

That's this week on Nevada week.

Support for Nevada Week i provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt and other supporters.

Welcome to Nevada Week.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

Las Vegas visitation is dow while the price of gas is rising and food costs continue to outpace overall inflation.

At the same time, consumer spending remained steady and housing affordability has improved for eight straight months.

So what do these mixed signals mean for Nevada's economy?

National economic data doesn't always reflec what's happening here at home.

So that's why we have a pane together of experts helping us break it down.

Joining us are John Restrepo, principal of Las Vegas based Rcg, economics, Andrew Woods, director of the center for Busines and Economic Research at Unlv.

Elisa Cafferata, executive director of the Children's Advocacy Alliance.

And Peter Guzman, president and CEO of the Latin Chamber of Commerce.

Thank you all for joining us.

Let's start out with the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, it announced it is not changing the interest rate.

What does that mean for Nevada, if anything?

Jon.

I think it's steady as she goes for a while.

I think the main thing that I think the fed was concerned about, at least with Chairman Powell said, you know, they don't know what that's going to happen with oil price and the war in the Middle East.

And so we're going through probably another extended an extended bit of period of uncertainty probably in 2026 until the, you know, this this global unrest settles down and we see prices adjust.

So the big thing right now is the question oil probably think oil close at about 100 bucks a barrel the other day.

And so that starts flowing through the system, whether it's fertilizer prices or our jet fuel, which affects visitors and, you know, airline tickets and things like that.

So I think it's kind of wait and see kind of situation right now.

Andrew, we spoke earlier about the potential of the interest rate rising.

That was something that came out of this meeting with the Federal Reserve.

We'll explain that.

Sure.

I will also say if we take out what's happened, the events of the last couple of weeks, even before then there was still price pressures in the economy.

And consumers see it.

Right?

You see it with the price of beef.

You see it in other industries, such as travel and leisure and hospitality.

And for the long term, and what we've see with their decisions is they're cautious to continue to lower interest rates, given the environment that you have, these two, say two tailed rates, you have a very cold job market right now.

At the same time, you have a low unemployment rate.

And then on the other side of this, you still have very sticky prices that consumers see and feel and are eating into their budgets, especially for middle and lower income consumers.

Did I hear you correctly, though, that there was discussion of next year an interest rate increase?

Yes.

So was a member who put on next year that they think actually interest rates would be higher as part of their they don't call it forecast.

They call it projections.

But it would be higher.

I will say for cyber we've we've forecasted this year only one rate cut which the fed they made their decisio in their projection after hours.

But they also said one cut in.

So I would say that the right now at the beginning year no one was taking into account that there could be higher interest rates next year.

If we see what's now going on in the Middle East, continue to play out for months, that that certainly is now a risk to the economy of higher interest rates.

Peter Guzman with the Latin Chamber of Commerce, you were shaking your head when you heard that there could be an interest rate increase.

Why?

I believe that real estate, the buying and selling of real estat is what unleashes our economy.

And so I want to see more of it.

And how do you do that?

Yeah, it's by lowering interest rates.

I also want to say this.

You know why I love being president of the Latin Chamber of Commerce is it puts me in touch at a grassroots level with my members, becaus regardless of what experts say, it's always about how people feel, how are they feeling?

And, you know, up until the gas prices situation that's happening now, my members are feeling great.

My members are doing well, feeling pretty well.

We're going to see now with the gas prices because that really does affect landscaping members, small construction companies, you know, they have multiple trucks.

Gas prices definitely starts eating those profits.

And and small business will do what they always do.

And that is make a massive adjustment.

Sometimes that adjustment because see, the ecosystem of the econom all kind of touches each other.

They start spending less.

That starts hurting the economy.

Alicia, tell me what you are seeing with the Children's Advocac Alliance, which has an arm that is for the economic well-being of children here in Nevada.

Right.

So what we're seeing is, families are more and more relying on either their savings or credit cards to cover basic expenses and consumers.

A third of savers had a highe balance on their credit cards.

So the interest rates are influencing their ability to do day to day buying the necessities foo covering rent, and all of that.

And I think the other thing that's happening is the, changes that are coming from the federal government, from H.R.

one, the federal government bill are already hitting the Nevad families that need it the most.

45,000 peopl have lost their Snap benefits.

We have, 42,000 folk no longer enrolled in Medicaid.

And we know bigger cuts are coming after the election this year.

So, we're made in the name of fiscal responsibility.

But what do you think people may not realize about the ripple effect of those?

Well, just for example take Snap, which is Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program which is what used to be called food stamps.

So not only are, ove 40,000 families have lost that, today, but the small grocery store is a little bodega on the corner.

They're losing business, too, because a big chunk of their business was people buying foo in those local grocery stores.

So it hit small busines as well as hitting our families.

Peter, did you bring up health insurance as an issue that small businesses are grappling with?

When we spoke on the.

Yeah, of course I mean, help health insurance, health care.

Not only is it a personal issue, it's also economic development.

It's it's our economy.

If we're not doing well and we're not figuring out health care, we're we're going to b in a lot of hurt in the future.

I mean, I think it's a major issue, right?

We are going to be in a lot of hurt because the cuts to Medicaid, but also, the federal budget is cutting, reimbursement rates and, subsidies to hospitals.

I think we're going to see, rural hospitals closing or struggling.

And I certainly agree with all that.

And that's why we got to get on the table and come up with real solutions, because what's not sustainable is just printing money to take care of all these things that are unsustainable.

We need serious solutions which is what has partly led to inflation.

Correct?

Just the the printing of money, the creation of money, the throwing of money, at, at issues, since Covid, for example.

What do you think the solution is here, John, in terms of health care?

And, maybe that's not the right question for an economist, but you kept saying yes.

So, yeah, I mean, the health care question is a huge issue, primarily for an economy like ours that's so dependent on discretionary spending of visitors.

So many visitors are feeling stressed at home.

However, they're financially stressed or maybe traveling less.

Or as Andrew mentioned earlier, they may be coming, but spending les when they come, where they go to closer in vacations and things like that.

So they fall all falls through the US.

You know, at the end of the day, I think for and we've talked about this at Diciamo here in southern that for many, many years.

You know we have a very volatile economy, one of the most volatile i the country in terms of a metro area of our side, because we are based on discretionary spending, as I said earlier.

So until we had a more diversified economy with higher paid wages and folks can afford the houses that we were talking about earlier.

So part of the issues that interest, not only interest rates but our wages are our mismatch on our housing costs.

and what we don't know yet, which I forgot to mention earlier.

And that is we have not seen yet the full effect of tariffs.

So the business folk that Peter has mentioned early in the Latin chamber, their input costs are still relatively managed as soon as those tariffs are kicking in.

And we think that's going to happen this summer, and that toward the end of the year, we'll see how their input cost for, let's say, the restaurants and other folks like that, how that's going to affect them.

So there's a lot of that dust in the air right no between the war and the tariffs and all this turmoil.

So I think we've got another year of a little bit of a chaotic situation before we see what the long term trends are.

Uncertainty is a key one.

Yeah That's the key word right now.

You also talke about visitation to Las Vegas.

It declined by 7.5% last year.

And this decline is a topic that we asked Derek Stevens about.

He owns several downtown casinos.

Let's listen to that.

And then I will get your reaction.

Andrew, this is a result of thi k-shaped economy where any like the top half of the econom seems to be doing pretty well.

The bottom half is not doing well.

And this is where inflation is really kind of taking it, taking a big chunk chunk out of the bottom half, which is a which is a tough scenario to be in.

And your clientele is wher it's in the middle of all that.

Right?

Oh no no no no.

Everybody that comes to Vegas is in the top half.

That's that's the reality.

And I think some of that ha to do with the fact that Vegas has gotten expensive for for the average person.

And it's having a bit of an impact.

But the spenders are coming, that's for sure.

Andrew, your thoughts on that.

Sure.

Well loo we see it in the data as well.

Private jet coming in and out of Harry Reid.

International International's the same as it was last, you know, year over year for 2025 versus 2024.

If you look at, you know, business travel, it was pretty much the same in 2025 as it was in 2024, where the market is really getting hurt here for Vegas.

Is that middle to lower income visitation?

I would argue that it's not so much whether Vegas is too expensive or not.

It's more about how do people actually fee about whether it's too expensive or not, the perception versus the reality.

If you look at domestic trave in the United States last year, people still went and traveled over the summer and into the fall at record levels, and we're expecting 170.

The industry is expecting 173 million people traveling this spring, a record amount despite everything else going on.

But they're not necessarily choosing Vegas as part of that selection because of the maybe the perception of how they feel with everything, the way the pricing structure is when you get here versus people go to Disneyland, they don't feel any richer coming back from Disneyland but they're choosing Disneyland because they can take that hurt upfront because they have confidence once they pay for the bundle that gives them the hotel and the airfare and the Fastpass and all of that, they're not they don't feel like they're going to get nickel and dime the rest of the time.

Again, Disneyland is not cheap.

No, but they had record profits last year, and this just shows the contrast with Vegas and how we're pricing things right.

A recent article in routers is titled Las Vegas sees sharp visito drop as leisure spending wanes.

And there is an excerpt in that that reads, quote, with the top 10% of earners driving consumer spending, economists warn recession risks can rise if affluent market linked spending suddenly cools.

Elise, I did not bring u your past experience with Deere and the Department of Employment here in Nevada.

What is your experience in relation to recessions and what have you seen personally in that past role?

So we know that the hospitality industry was the last one to get back up to pre-pandemic employment levels.

All the other industries rebounded faster, and part of that was changes tha the hospitality industry made.

They weren't cleaning rooms every day and they automated a lot of their processes.

Now you can check in in a kiosk instead of with a clerk.

So, I think that all of those things, the hospitality industr will continue to do to sort of streamline their financial situation, but those are a lot of those sort of entry level basic bread and butter jobs that were, in the state that are not coming back.

So we need to dieter's focus in the workforce development, folks.

Focus is on retraining.

And that's really wha every family can do to invest in sort of surviving everything that's coming our way.

Whatever it is, is, take a online class, get a certificate.

There's a lot of help to do that.

And certain industries over others, right?

There's more investment in target industries that we know are coming or that we want to grow here, like aerospace, technology, biotech and health care.

Certainly.

And the more health care workers we have, then the more affordable we can make health care.

So that's a that's an investment we really need to make as a state.

I just add on that on to just just feeding off that.

We know last year in the state of Nevada and here in Clark County, 65% of the jobs create were just in health care alone.

And we know a second to that was leisure hospitality.

But it's very business cycle driven.

I also just heard anecdotally this morning in the mining and critical mineral space, even though there's been all this focus on it, we're getting passed over because of our workforce, because they feel like it competes with it.

Like we wouldn't be able to meet the demand if they expanded here.

So they're looking even at California as like we always say, California is so expensive.

They don't want to compete with their own workforce if it's in California versus in Nevada.

And so we're missing these opportunities because we're not getting enough of that investment in the workforce and the workforce is not skilled enough here to fill those roles.

Is that yeah, the pool of people that would qualify just even if, again, if it's the one class away or one certificate, as Lisa is saying, it's still not big enough in terms of meeting some of the demand there.

And I know with health care they have to import a lot of the specialties here.

And I'm not always talking about jobs that require MDS or nursing degrees.

These are still you can get medical technicians you can get home health aides.

You know, there's lots o different opportunities there.

I know in the bioscience space that we worked in, there's a lot of associate degree type jobs that you can get into.

But again we're not meeting that demand.

Peter, what are you recommending to your members?

Well, and not to be the bad guy up here, but let me tell you some automation.

I it's coming and it's goin to eliminate a lot of positions.

That's just the way it is.

So I what do I recommend we're recommending?

And not only recommending?

We're teaching our members how to utilize AI, how to utilize automation and technology, because if they don't, they're going to get left behin did you want to add something.

Yeah, I was going to say actually you're the autho of a report on this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean a Peter nailed I mean Vegas keeps coming up in terms of this like, major metro areas that are with or susceptible to most job losses because of AI and automation.

We're always at the top five.

I mean, and the jobs tha are going to be created from AI.

This is according to a report, I think, from Goldman Sachs.

About 70% of those jobs will be required a master's degree or higher.

Okay.

So the question becomes from the dislocation of the of the blue collar job that we will see from AI, or the what's the percentage of those folks that go back to college start getting master's degrees and PhDs.

Right.

And if it's a small percentage, what do we do about that?

And so that also touches into our economic development strategy.

So what kind of industries are we trying to attract.

And do we care that they are job creators or not.

For example, the third piece of that, which I don't think we spend as much time on, I think Peter does more than most folks, and that is what are we doing to develo our skilled blue collar workers, the machinists, the the Hvac people, electricians, the plumbers?

Those are not easily replaced by AI.

Those are the kind of jobs and they pay well.

A car mechanic, people like that.

Those are the folks that we should be spending a lot more time on trying to groom that, that part of the workforce.

It does have a material effect on the quality of life of the community and the quality of life of those families, where if those workers can move toward more of those skilled blue collar jobs and shout out to our universities and our colleges, I mean, CSN in particular is definitely already thinking that way.

And and we work closely with them because we know that this is coming in.

To put your head in the sand is dangerous, right?

The diversification of the Southern Nevada economy is a big topic here.

Alicia, you were at the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance event, this past week.

And what stood out to you there?

The one thing was the report from the Hickey and Associates company that does relocations.

And one of the slides he went by really fast was one of the biggest barriers for companies moving to new areas is the cost and the access to childcare.

And we know that, childcare issues are costing Nevada about $1 billion a year in terms of people not being able to have jobs or being absent or being distracted.

And so we're seeing states around the country, and we're working with th business folks here to encourage the state to really invest in, early childcare, education opportunities, either child care or pre-K, because that unlocks workforce participation.

And you want women to work in the mines and drive those machines.

And I hear they're safer tha the men driving those machines.

You got to give them some reliable childcare so they can come to work, and they will bring their skills into the workforce.

And the state did make a significant investment in early childhood education this past session.

But what did the state not do that you wish they had, or what are you going to be asking the state to do next session?

It was a $75 million investment in pre-K slots, which is the first dedicated funding in the state, which is great.

But it's a lot of it, the pre-K stuff, a lot of times it is not a full day.

And so it's difficult to access for people who are working because it's hard to drop your kid off at ten and pick them up at one.

So we need, we need a mixed delivery system so you can have home care settings, childcare settings.

And then with the schools losing enrollment, which the, Interim Education Committe just focused on all the schools that are losing enrollment, maybe we open those rooms for pre-K, programs.

So we really we really nee to put everything on the table.

I'm really excited about the city of Reno passed an ordinance that, cleaned up all the requirements for home based health care.

So they eliminated childcare Home-Based health care.

They eliminated a requirement for a $4,000 conditional use permit which is totally a huge barrier.

So I'm with you.

I think there's things we can do that don't cost money, that make it easier for people to open these businesses something that we often don't talk about here in Nevada.

And mayb we don't like talking about it.

We have a very tax friendly state, obviously, we're not particularly friendly regulatory wise, whether it's zoning occupational licensing, zoning laws, building, permitting, things like that, this whole regulatory environment is a challenge for u and the regulatory environment.

How does that fit in with the HOA legislation and child care from last session?

So there was a bill last session to make i so HOA could not prohibit child care businesses in their HOA and especially in Las Vegas.

Pretty muc all the new housing has an HOA.

And so, and we know, and you probably will know, that most families want their infants in a, in a home based childcare setting, like, that's close to home.

That's that's what they would prefer.

So, we're going to go work with the HOA Association and find out what the barriers were.

But, you know, because that was vetoed, that was vetoed.

And, and I think, I think you're right.

We want to incentivize people.

This is this is a small business.

It's great for young moms, so they can stay home with their kid and take care of a few others.

So I do think there are a lot of great, conversations being had around the state.

To help Andrew, I want to talk about the new research paper that you have and small businesses post Covid during Covid.

What did you find?

Sure.

after the pandemic.

We saw a lot of headlines out there, kind of randomly on the internet saying Nevada is one of the best, one of the top producing state for new businesses.

We're not.

Is this true?

And if it is, so who's creating these?

Where?

What kind of businesses is this helping our economy?

what we found is that to two out of every five existing businesses in the state of Nevada currently operating only came about during or after the Covid pandemic, and those businesses still operate as of the end of 2020 for the latest period of the data.

So they survived coming out, you know, the pandemic, high inflation and high labor costs, all of the messiness.

And they're still operating as of a year and a half ago, as far as we can tell in the data.

What's interesting about that, too, is it's not just simply there were more businesses created, there were more businesses with employees created, and particularly the ban that we saw the biggest growth in employment was the businesses between 20 and 99 employees.

So it's these kind of mid-sized businesses.

Another thin that's really interesting about this is who created these businesses.

So yes, predominantly still men, but a larger portion than the pre-pandemic trend of women started businesses.

Now they were more non employer businesses.

We think more like gettin childcare services potentially, janitorial, marketing.

Yeah, all sorts of different kind of topic areas.

But we also see that more there was more business created by Hispanic beauty, African American, Asian all went up significantly after the pandemic.

Employer and non employee businesses.

So whether it's just themselves or with others a lot of this the non employer is tied to Uber and Lyft and delivery of food okay.

But what' really seen about the employer the businesses with employees.

They are in the areas that we've talked about.

We've been talking up foreve about economic diversification.

They're in professional and business services.

They're in health care.

They're in real estate.

They're in other services.

So again, could be childcare, could be other, marketing consulting, those kind of things.

So they're in the area we've been talking a long time.

It's just these are small, you know, businesses.

So under 500 employees.

So they're they're still nascent.

But what you hope to happe is given the long period of time and conditions and demand, they turn into a handful of these, turn into large scale business one day.

want to fit one last topic in.

Well, it's kind of a combined question, Peter.

So what's it going to take for these Latino owned businesses to continue to thrive?

And then other question the immigration topic ha that impacted Nevada businesses?

Have you seen people afraid to go to work, employers reporting, not having as many employees to question for you.

So a the first one, how can they continue to exist?

By allowing them to exist, by allowing them to be here an pay taxes and not commit crimes and do a great job that they've been doing the businesses.

Yeah.

Okay.

Let let them thrive.

Don't be scared.

I mean, leave them alone.

They're doing great.

They're entrepreneurs, and they came here because, we offer, just a wonderfu environment for entrepreneurs.

And so let them when you're saying leave them alone, who are you saying that to immigrants, Latino, the Latino that he's talking about that opened up businesses?

Let's let them continue to thrive.

And then your second question on immigration, of course, listen, businesses, especiall small businesses like stability.

So when there is no stability, chaos, they're adjusting every day.

Now they'll do it smal businesses know how to do this.

They know how to adjust every day.

But for God's sake some stability would be great.

And how do we get some stability?

By having legitimate adult adults in the room coming up with real immigration policy, because right now we have no immigration policy no policy is creating chaos.

And what is chaos create creates my restaurant owners fine seeing less people going out to eat.

Grocery stores are doing well.

Not.

You know, that's ironic.

See, they're all connected.

My grocery store members are doing great because people are buying groceries and cooking it at home instead of kind of going out.

So this will have an effect and it doesn't.

I don't believe it needs to.

Do you want to add something?

Add one thing.

So silver has been doing the population forecast for Clark County since 1997.

We're getting ready to reset every year.

Get ready to do it again.

One concern we have when it comes to immigration is two thirds of the population growth in Clark County.

The last 4 or 5 years has been from international migrants.

It's not from California, as we've all thought.

California has actually been at lower levels post-pandemic than it was it pre-pandemic.

And international migration is not just, you know, people thin from South and Central America.

It's also from Southeast Asia, it's from Europe.

All of those actually grew exponentially after the pandemic.

Moving here to Clark County.

We're certainly now looking at the numbers and turning to the mos recent data that it's a concern if there's less population growth.

That's a whole new dynamic that we haven't experienced in Clark County and I don't know, decades.

And that's such an example.

What was mentioned earlier, if he was to say that to 100 of my members, they would all push bac and say, no, it's Californians moving here ruining our state.

That's the perception out on the street, right?

So weird.

Right?

Yeah.

But there are a lot of Californians moving here.

Yeah, yeah.

Upper income Californians moving here.

Yeah.

That top 10%.

Right.

Okay.

We run out of time.

But thank you so much.

All for for your input.

And thank you at home for watching for any of the resource discussed, go to Vegas PBS.org slash Nevada Week and I'll see you next week on Nevada Week.

I. Love they.