LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — There is an ongoing labor shortage for many businesses and the Las Vegas Strip seeing it firsthand.
“Some of the casinos may not want those employees back,” said Jason Baucom, a financial advisor at the Budin Group. “They had the opportunity to clean house and bring some back and not others.”
The pandemic has made much of the Strip exercise caution. These are uncertain times and as events come back, confidence in the economy grows. But in the meantime, they’re noticing some savings on overhead.
“When you look at a craps table, you’ve got four dealers essentially,” he said. “Plus a supervisor and a pit boss. That’s six employees with, at the most, ten people around it. When you can have it automated 24 hours a day, it’s more efficient for the casino and less overhead to pay for.”
Automated table games have become more common, and the pandemic has had a lot to do with that.
“We’ve seen an increase in demand because you can get in at a lower entry price,” said Gordon Prouty, vice president of community affairs at Westgate Las Vegas. “Some of the tables are as low as $1.”
Many jobs are there, but they are still slow to fill. Westgate Las Vegas has about 100 openings across a variety of positions, and it is not alone. A spokesperson for MGM Resorts says:
“Las Vegas and our industry is recovering fast and we’ve been calling back and seeking to hire new employees as quickly as we can. We’ve received a large, enthusiastic response from our recent hiring events and are continuing to actively recruit employees as business and visitation grow.”
“We’re still not back to our full employment status and there are many weeks where we’re at our capacity levels and business levels that we were at pre-pandemic,” said Prouty. “I think it’s a number of different factors. But we’ve had success, we’re filling jobs, just not as quickly as we’d like to.”
Baucom says you must be technologically savvy and might need to retrain yourself in some capacity in order to keep up with this current trend in society. The good news is many hospitality jobs are expected to return eventually.
“The people coming into Vegas is mainly Thursday through Sunday,” he said. “You still have that Monday through Wednesday crowd for typical conventions that aren’t here yet. We know they’re coming. We know conventions are coming back. And that’s when they’ll truly be needed.”
One of those conventions that is coming back is SEMA next week. And casinos such as Westgate have already brought on some new hires to accommodate an uptick in guests.
As far as automated gaming goes their prevalence on casino floors is being left up to us.
“We’re hearing from some guests that they’re not quite ready yet,” said Prouty. “They will be. But they prefer the ETG (Electronic Table Games), and we’ll see what happens long-term if they decide more people prefer that experience or they want to go back to the regular table games.”
MGM Resorts will have a couple of hiring events next week.
- Tuesday, Nov. 2: Front Desk at 840 Grier Drive; 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
- Thursday, Nov. 4: Housekeeping/EVS at 840 Grier Drive; 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
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