Earlier this month, Nevada’s Department of Employment came out with a statistic that caught our eye: the number of Nevada EMPLOYERS is at a record high.
But what about the number of EMPLOYEES?
Bill Anderson, the chief economist for Nevada's Department of Training, Employment and Rehabilitation, told KNPR's State of Nevada that indeed we're are seeing steady growth for both employers and employees.
"We're seeing broad based improvement," Anderson said, "We're growing in all but one of ten super sectors."
The only sector that is not growing is the mining industry and that it is mostly due to declining gold prices.
Anderson pointed out that employers doesn't mean businesses, because employers can have more than one store or office or restaurant.
"What we saw during the recession was that we lost approximately 5,000 employers in this state, going roughly from the time from 61,000 to about 56,000," he said, but that has improved and we are gradually making up ground.
"We've set record levels of employer counts in each of the last three quarters," Anderson said.
But like most economists have pointed out, the economic hole Nevada was in during the Great Recession was so deep that it will take time to get out of it.
Anderson said Nevada lost 175,000 jobs during the recession, which was one of the most pronounced job losses in the country.
"You have to keep in mind, especially from a jobs perspective, Nevada was hit very, very hard by the recession," Anderson said.
He said that so far 100,000 of those lost jobs have returned to the economy and another 40,000 will be added by the end of this year. The total number is expected to be reached by 2016.
Those new jobs aren't just part time, according to Anderson.
"Nearly all of the new jobs that we have been adding have been full time in nature," he said.
He said 90 percent of the online job postings are for full-time positions.
Bill Anderson, chief economist, Nevada’s Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation.
