One state. Every Nevada.
Section
Nevada's economy, jobs market, and business climate; from statewide unemployment and corporate law to energy, data centers, and the industries driving growth outside the Strip.
Barry Diller’s People Inc walked away from its $18 billion offer for MGM Resorts this week, and within a day reports had MGM chasing Diller’s company instead, a reversal that has left Nevada’s Gaming Commission and the state’s largest Culinary Union employer with an ownership question nobody can currently answer.
Shareholders approved the Fertitta buyout 65.4% to 2.1% at a Tuesday meeting in Reno, and the deal’s casino math in Stateline now looks like the exact ownership level regulators forced Caesars’ last owner to break up six years ago.
State tax records show gold-fueled mining revenue jumped 64% last year, but Nevada’s own price data shows gold is barely higher than where 2025 ended while diesel has climbed nearly 72% since last September, squeezing the exact “net proceeds” the tax is built on.
The self-generating power plants face no renewable energy mandate at all, and fall outside Gov. Joe Lombardo’s new tax and cost-shifting rules for data centers, which apply only to companies seeking state abatements.
The state that held the nation’s highest unemployment rate every month from January 2022 through at least mid-2025 just posted its best jobless rate in six years, but Nevada’s labor force has contracted for three consecutive months even as employers kept adding jobs.
The panel that sets the revenue figures Nevada’s budget runs on left its gambling tax forecast untouched for 18 months while actual collections ran far ahead of it, a track record now facing its next test as the state’s tourism chief warns the same panel of a slowdown.
A November question would let Boulder City open 14,000 acres to data centers at rents the campaign says will run 10 times higher than solar’s. Divide the city’s own $1.336 billion, 70-year revenue estimate by the years in it, and the answer comes in under what solar leases are already generating this year.
Steve Hill described a K-shaped tourism economy to the panel that sets Nevada’s revenue forecast, and hours later a separate federal survey showed consumer sentiment falling even further than the number he cited, but two of his own figures don’t match what his agency and the Federal Reserve have already published.
Every bill, veto, special session, and candidate filing in Nevada is a matter of public record. Here is what turns up when you actually go looking.
Colovore Reno 1’s abatement works out to $407,697 per job, 65 times the rate calculated for this article on the eight other companies approved the same day, and Nevada’s attorney general has now opened a formal ratepayer survey on data centers’ power costs, as he and Gov. Joe Lombardo clash over the incentives in this year’s race for governor.
