The unemployment rate fell another tenth in July, finishing the month at 7.7 percent.
The state is now at 92 percent of its prerecession peak and more than 100,000 jobs higher than July 2020 after the pandemic shut down the state’s economy.
Most of the damage remains within the casino and hotel industry, which is still down 67,000 jobs compared to before the pandemic hit. By comparison, food services is 97 percent recovered and retail trade employment is 100 percent recovered.
All three metropolitan reporting areas added more jobs in July. The Las Vegas area added 6,500 jobs and the Reno-Sparks area 500. Carson City added 100 jobs to its total.
Altogether, Carson City reported 30,800 jobs in July. The vast majority were in service-providing occupations, 26,600. Of those, 8,900 were federal, state, local and school district government jobs.
Reno had a total of 245,300 people working in July. That includes 44,900 mining, construction and manufacturing jobs as well as 26,900 government jobs.
In the Las Vegas reporting area, 953,100 were employed as of the end of July. Leisure and hospitality make up the largest single sector there with 224,900 workers followed by trade with 199,500 employed.
David Schmidt, chief economist for the Department of Employment, Rehabilitation and Training, said while the data is positive, it still shows significant disruption to the economy as businesses seek to recover from the pandemic.
Total employment in the state finished July at 1.33 million, a gain of 107,800 over July 2020.
