Las Vegas Visitor Volumes Decline in Last Two Months of 2021

After picking up to a pandemic-era high in October, the number of people visiting Las Vegas dropped off in November and even further in December. The number of visitors to the Entertainment Capital of the World fell 11.4% from October to December, with a 3.5% drop specifically in the last month of the year. In December, roughly 3 million people visited Las Vegas, taking the annual total to 32.2 million. Compared to the pre-pandemic level in 2019, the number of visitors to Las Vegas during 2021 was down 24.2%, but well ahead of the 19 million visitors hosted in 2020. With visitors returning to Las Vegas, jobs continue to bounce back. The Las Vegas market added 80,000 jobs in 2021, with 35,000 of those positions returning to the Leisure/Hospitality Services industry. Las Vegas’ 8.8% job growth rate over the past year was the leading performance among the nation’s core 150 apartment markets. However, the Las Vegas job base has still not reached full recovery. As of December, the overall job base was 5.5% below pre-pandemic levels. This was tied with New York as the worst outcome among the largest 50 markets and the fifth-worse outcome out of the top 150 markets. The job base in Leisure/Hospitality Services, the hardest hit employment sector in Las Vegas during the pandemic, is still nearly 21% below pre-pandemic norms.