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The Las Vegas skyline on Sunday, April 26, 2020. (L.E. Baskow/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @Left_Eye_Images
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ByEli Segall/Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 3, 2024 - 6:00 am
Updated June 3, 2024 - 2:22 pm
Las Vegas’ economy has come a long way since the dark days of the pandemic when casinos were forced to close and unemployment shot past 30 percent in the tourism-dependent region.
But more than four years after the public health crisis upended daily life, Southern Nevada’s jobless rate is still above its pre-pandemic level — and it’s highest in the nation among large metro areas.
The Las Vegas area’s unemployment rate in April was 5.2 percent, the highest on a list of 51 large metro areas’ jobless rates tracked by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Nashville, Tennessee, had the lowest jobless rate on the list, at 2.2 percent.
Here’s a look at how Las Vegas’ unemployment rate compared to several other metro areas in February 2020, the month before the pandemic shut down much of the economy; in April 2020; and this past April.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.
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