Thanks to the State of the States publication from the AGA, we’ve got some decent numbers for the national commercial casino industry. With more than ten years of reports behind us, I decided to start pulling together some of the statistical information into 1-pagers that will make it easier to see the trends in American casino gambling.
What’s the trend? Fewer casino employees. Nationally, the number of people working at casinos reached its peak in 2000–ten whole years ago–and has had a net decline since then, though there was a considerable bump in the middle of the decade. As of December 2009, 328,377 people worked in casinos–about the 1998 levels, though three states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Kansas) have added casinos since then.
Nevada casino work isn’t looking so promising: 177,397 work in Nevada casinos now, considerably fewer than in 1998 (182,621).
This reports suggests that casino in general are become less labor-intensive. I’m currently working on a Nevada project that will prove (or disprove, though it seems unlikely) this proposition by relating employment to numbers of hotel rooms, gaming positions, and gaming revenues.
Here’s the US Commercial Casino Employment report: http://gaming.unlv.edu/reports/casino_employees.pdf