Coronavirus Economic Fallout: Las Vegas, Casinos Industry Struggle Under Shutdown

Heavily reliant on tourism and gambling, Las Vegas and the casino industry face a difficult economic future due to coronavirus stay-at-home orders.

USA Today reported Sunday that the famously bustling Sin City now resembles a ghost town, with empty streets, boarded up casinos, and dormant displays and water fixtures.

“It’s crazy,” Chris Morehouse, 70, an Elvis impersonator, told USA Today. “It’s like the end of the world.”

A study from the Nevada Resort Association found a troubling outlook for workers in the state, as hospitality employees will lose an estimated $7.7. billion in pay over the next 18 months if resorts and casinos remain shuttered for 30-90 days. One-in-three Nevada employees works in either tourism, leisure, hospitality or gambling.

“For heaven’s sake,” Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman, an independent, said at a city council meeting in April. “Being closed is killing us already, and killing Las Vegas, our industry, our convention and tourism business that we have all worked so hard to build.”

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, has remained cautious to move forward with plans to reopen the state. Sisolak has explained that his state would need to see cases decline for 2-3 weeks and implement broader testing and tracking procedures before he would consider easing lockdown rules.

“We will rebuild our economy,” Sisolak said Wednesday in an interview with CNN. “Las Vegas will continue to thrive. But I can’t do that if I lose more people.”

Goodman also recently appeared on CNN in an interview with Anderson Cooper that went viral based on her questionable responses. Goodman attempted to make the case for reopening the cities resorts and casinos but things quickly went off the rails.

Asked if casinos would not be a “petri dish” for the coronavirus, Goodman dismissed Cooper as “an alarmist.” When presented with research from China about the spread of the virus in confined spaces like casinos, Goodman insisted that the research would not apply since it was not conducted in Las Vegas. She also went so far as to volunteer the city as a “control group” for reopening major cities.

According to Johns Hopkins University, Nevada has so far seen over 4,600 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 206 deaths.