Las Vegas Visitor Volumes Tick Back Up in February

Despite the lingering impacts of the Omicron variant, tourism activity picked up in Las Vegas recently. More than 2.6 million people visited the Entertainment Capital of the World in February 2022, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Although that was up 5.7% from the previous month and roughly 70% higher than the number of visitors hosted a year earlier, it was still 21.5% below the pre-pandemic level from February 2020. With visitors continuing to pour into Las Vegas, jobs have bounced back. The Las Vegas market added 116,300 jobs in the year-ending February 2022, with more than half of those positions returning to the Leisure/Hospitality Services industry (61,800 jobs). Las Vegas’ 12.7% annual job growth rate in February was the leading performance among the nation’s core 150 apartment markets. Recent job gains have taken Las Vegas’ overall employment count closer to the pre-pandemic level from February 2020, though the Leisure/Hospitality Services industry still has a lot of ground to make up. As of February 2022, Las Vegas’ overall job base was just 1.6% below the pre-pandemic level, the 25th best outcome among the 50 largest U.S. markets. The job base in Leisure/Hospitality Services, the hardest hit employment sector in Las Vegas during the pandemic, is still nearly 10% below pre-pandemic norms. Still, that’s a major improvement over the nearly 60% hole recorded in May 2020.