Atlantic City, Lake Charles 2 of Hardest-Hit Metros by COVID-19

Atlantic City, NJ, and Lake Charles, La., two towns with economies that greatly count on casino resorts, were devastated by COVID-19. A brand-new report shows just how bad the pandemic affected those areas.

The US Bureau of Labor Data monitors work numbers for 384 cities across the country. When it pertains to year-over-year employment loss from 2019 to 2020, Lake Charles and Atlantic City were hit more complex than all but one metro: the resort mecca of Kahului-Wailuku-Lahaina. Hey there.

Lake Charles experienced a 15.9 percent drop in employment, and Atlantic City 15.8 percent, just that Hawaii city experienced a more disastrous decline at 24.7 percent.

Lake Charles saw its labor force tumble from 114,500 individuals with tasks to 96,300 in 2015. Atlantic City saw more than 21,100 people forced to go on joblessness.

Las Vegas, which saw some 128,100 people forced off the task in 2020, didn’t fare much better. Sin City experienced a year-over-year work rate decline of 12.3 percent, which ranked the country’s gambling establishment capital No. 377 out of 384 cities.

Will Gambling Establishments Revive Employees?

The William J. Hughes Center for Public Law at Stockton University recently launched its summer season 2021 problem of the South Jersey Economic Review (SJER). Editor Oliver Cooke, an associate professor of economics at the state school, says casinos will substantially function in the region’s healing.

Perhaps most important to the regional economy’s near-term outlook (in late 2021 and 2022) will be the instructions its casino market takes,” Cooke explained.

He explained that while land-based gross gaming revenue (GGR) plunged 44 percent in 2020 due to prolonged state-mandated closures, iGaming and online sports wagering grown. iGaming doubled to $970 million, and sportsbooks won 35 percent more to $166 million.

” An essential concern that will loom over the regional economy as the national and local healings play out over the rest of 2021 and into 2022 is whether Atlantic City gambling establishment industry supervisors elect to return their physical residential or commercial properties’ personnel levels to pre-pandemic criteria or redirect resources to greater revenue margin income streams, which require far fewer brick-and-mortar employees,” Cooke stated.

Casino Employment Numbers

Casinos in Lake Charles and Atlantic City are no longer restricted to most COVID-19 functional limitations. Before the two states raising capability limitations, joblessness rates in the gaming/hospitality sector in those two metros stayed high.

In April– the latest information available from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics– Atlantic City reported an unemployment rate of 11 percent. The nationwide average was 5.7 percent. The leisure and hospitality sector has brought back 2,300 employees given that January.

In Lake Charles, the area’s joblessness rate was much better, can be found at 7.0 percent. Its leisure and hospitality total workforce has held constant given that January at approximately 11,500 positions filled.