Nevada has emerged as the strongest labour market in the United States, outpacing every other state in workforce expansion over the past year.
The state’s workforce grew 1.9% from April 2025 to 2026, the highest rate of any state in the country, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Nationally, workforce growth crept up just 0.2% over the same period, making Nevada’s performance all the more striking against a sluggish broader jobs market.
Approximately 12% of all new jobs created in the US during those 12 months were generated in Nevada, a remarkable share for a state that accounts for only around 1% of the national population.
Economic leaders say the results reflect years of deliberate effort to broaden the state’s economic base well beyond its historic reliance on gambling and entertainment.
David Schmidt, chief economist at Nevada’s Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation, said the state is now “a relatively small state being mentioned in the same breath as California, Texas, Florida,” with jobs numbers putting up “really remarkable numbers that we’re seeing.”
Professional and business services roles saw the most growth over the past year, a trend Schmidt attributed to the state’s favourable tax environment, alongside strong gains in education and health services.
Nevada’s vast open land and lithium reserves have also drawn significant investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure, including data centres and mining operations supplying battery components critical to running AI systems.
The Las Vegas Strip’s largest casinos saw revenues decline nearly 4% between fiscal 2024 and 2025, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board, yet the broader economy has grown far less dependent on gaming than in previous decades.
An analysis of federal data shared with CNBC by the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance found that roughly 60% of new jobs in the Las Vegas metro area from 2016 to 2025 came from industries outside hospitality, construction and government.
“Looking at the data, the thing that stands out the most is how widespread the growth is,” Schmidt said, pointing to the breadth of sectors contributing to the expansion.
Nevada-based job listings have grown approximately 20% compared with February 2020, while the national figure has risen by around just 2%, according to online jobs platform Indeed.
Staffing agency ManpowerGroup found that worker demand has held up better in Nevada than in the average US state during the second quarter, further underlining the state’s labour market resilience.
LV Petroleum CEO Kris Roach has hired hundreds of workers over the past year to staff the company’s restaurants and travel centres, describing it as “very easy” to find staff, sometimes receiving more than 100 applications for a single managerial role.
“It’s a great state to operate in,” Roach said. “There’s so much untapped talent.”
Stephen Miller, an economics professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, noted that the state’s unemployment rate remains above the national average, partly reflecting a workforce still recovering since the Covid pandemic.
“We had so many people that were unemployed” starting in 2020, Miller said. “We’re still catching up.”
Nevada’s population has surged more than 62% from 2000 to 2025, far outpacing the roughly 21% national increase, with proximity to California cited as a key driver of that demographic growth.
Average hourly pay in Nevada climbed nearly 6% from 2024 to 2025, the fifth largest increase of any state, according to a CNBC analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
Emma Keserich, a vice president at the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance who relocated from the Washington DC area last summer, said attitudes toward the region are shifting. “People think Las Vegas is just the Strip,” she said. “There’s just more than what meets the eye.”