Reno: A decade to recover

When Reno makes it onto one of those magazine ranking lists of “most livable cities” or “best business climate,” local media usually report it heavily as though it was coming from holy scripture.

Which makes the relative media silence on Reno’s ranking on the business site 24/7 Wall Street puzzling. Reno places No. 1 on a list of “Ten Cities That Will Take A Decade To Recover From the Recession” complied by IHS Global Insight, an international economic forecasting firm.

“Although Nevada was one of 24 states to see a decrease in unemployment this past May, unemployment increased in Reno,” wrote analyst Charles Stockdale. “The city’s economy relies on gaming and tourism, two industries which have been hit extremely hard by the recession. Additionally, about ‘25 percent of the [city’s] workforce is employed in the fields of construction, manufacturing, transportation, communications, public utilities, and finance related services,’ according to Reno’s website. These sectors cannot flourish without the development produced by gaming within the city. It will now take more than a decade for the 36,000 jobs lost in the metropolitan area during the recession to return to the area, according to IHS.”