The largest employer in Clark County held a career fair yesterday as part of several hiring events open to the public. The 200 jobs posted by the Clark County School District on Monday included teachers, substitutes, paraprofessionals, transportation and school police.
"There's always opportunities, even some that aren't advertised right now," said Wayne Williams, a recruitment director for the School District.
Among the candidates was Ricardo Sandoval of Las Vegas who was eyeing a maintenance job with the school district. Sandoval already works in construction full-time, but he doesn't have benefits. Sandoval's mother, Maria, who has been working as a hotel housekeeper, needs to do lighter work as she gets older and hopes to find that in food service. Sandoval's sister Eloisa works in food service but is looking to go from part-time to full-time.
The number of available jobs in the Las Vegas metro area increased to 907,000 in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of jobs during the pre-recession peak was 936,400 in December 2007. That same month, the unemployment rate was 4.9 percent locally.
In April 2015, the 7.1 percent unemployment in the Las Vegas metro area represented an estimated 73,625 job seekers out of work locally. One of them is Ramonte Armstrong, who has been looking for six months without luck. His last job had been at an Amazon warehouse in Arizona, and he was looking to make a change within custodial or food services and finish school while working.
The valley just seems to be slow altogether in recovering from the recession. Out of 51 metro areas with more than a million residents, Las Vegas had the worst unemployment rate in April. In comparison. The Phoenix metro area's unemployment rate was at 4.9 percent, and Salt Lake City at 3.1 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Factors that contributed to a slower recovery — a workforce mostly without college degrees and jobs concentrated largely in two industries that were hit hard.
"The recession hurt the Las Vegas economy across the board. The industries that were hit the most were construction and then things that were in or related to hospitality. Things like even taxicabs were hurt, although limousines were hurt even more," said Steven Brown, economics professor at UNLV.
The number of Clark County construction jobs nearly halved from 116,448 in 2008 to 56,783 in 2013. In addition, the hotel and gaming industry in Clark County in 2008 employed 167,646 people compared to 157,487 in 2013, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Brown also points to the majority of the workforce not having a college degree. Only 22 percent earned a bachelor's degree or higher, according to the census estimate of Clark County residents ages 25 and older compared to almost 30 percent in Phoenix's Maricopa County and 31 percent in Salt Lake County.
So when will the number of jobs return to their pre-recession levels?
"Right now we're projecting about two years, not for gaming but for looking at overall employment levels," Brown said. "We're looking at about two years because the economy has been accelerating. If we look at numbers like total nonfarming employment, we'll see an acceleration of the Clark County economy."