Fact Pack! Business Cybercrime: Nevada 5th Worst

By Hightower Las Vegas and RCG Economics on September 22, 2026

Business cybercrime surged in the U.S. 2025, with reported incidents rising 18 percent and losses reaching more than $3.5 billion.

FBI data as of 2025

The concentration of reported cybercrime varies considerably from state to state, according to a new analysis of FBI data from Opstream. Researchers analyzed business email compromises, data breaches, ransomware, and intellectual property-related offenses, comparing reported victims with the number of businesses in each state.

The analysis found that by percentage, Nevada fared poorly, with 377 business victims of cybercrimes in 2025, as follows:

Total business victims of email scams: 272
Total business victims of data breaches: 49
Total business victims of ransomware attacks: 25
Total business victims of counterfeiting & IP theft: 31

(Victims are the total number of reported incidents across categories and do not necessarily represent unique businesses. Victim location corresponds to the headquarters of the affected business.)

In total, crimes combined to create $27,999,784 in losses for Nevada businesses.

Alaska had the nation’s highest concentration of crimes, with 47.3 reported per 10,000 businesses.
Arizona followed with 36.9 reported victims per 10,000 entities.
Washington state (36.1), Texas (35.3), and Nevada (34.9) rounded out the top five.

Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah also reported relatively high rates, putting the Mountain West above the national average for reported corporate cybercrime exposure per business — though of course, the largest numbers of victims were concentrated in the country’s biggest state economies (California, Texas, and New York).

Nationwide counts and losses in 2025:

Data source: Opstream analysis of the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center data

Image Credit: Opstream

NV Jobs

Nevada’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate decreased by 0.2 percentage points in August over July to 4.8 percent, the first time it has been below 5 percent since February 2020, according to the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation’s (DETR).

The reason for the rate change: Nevada’s labor force decreased by 5,951.
The seasonally adjusted total number of nonfarm jobs in August was 1,619,400, an annual increase of 1.3 percent (4,400 jobs) since July 2026.

Metropolitan Statistical Area Employment (seasonally adjusted):

Las Vegas employment increased by 7,000 jobs (0.6 percent) in August over July, and by 14,200 jobs (1.2 percent) since August 2025.
Reno employment increased 1,100 jobs (0.4 percent) over the month and increased by 2,800 jobs (1.0 percent) over the year.
Carson City employment saw a decrease of 100 jobs (0.3 percent) from July to August, and a decrease of 400 jobs (-1.2 percent) over August 2025.

Source: DETR As of August 2026

The annual growth rate in August was highest for:

professional and business services (5.1 percent)
education and health services (4.4 percent)
construction (3.2 percent)
Mining and logging (2.7 percent)

In terms of market share, the biggest employment centers in Nevada are:

Leisure and hospitality (22.3 percent)
Trade, transportation, and utilities (18.5 percent)
Professional and business services (14.8 percent)
Education and health services (11.8 percent)
Government (11.4 percent)

Health care jobs account for the five best-paying positions in Nevada:

NV Labor Market Paradox?

Nevada’s leading-the-nation small business creation numbers and high unemployment rate prompted The Nevada Independent’s Tabitha Mueller to write an explanatory story. She consulted several economists, including Fact Pack co-publisher John Restrepo. Excerpt:

Through July, Nevada’s labor force grew by 16,116 while the number of unemployed fell by 2,677, he said.

“People keep moving here, and they look for work before they find it,” Restrepo said. “Nevada has also run above the national rate for most of two decades, under both [political] parties, because a tourism-concentrated economy generates more hiring churn than a diversified one.”

NV Energy in the Spotlight

The Nevada Bureau of Consumer Protection is looking into NV Energy’s proposed shift in Southern Nevada toward “daily demand” pricing charges, which would assess rates based on a household’s peak 15-minute electricity usage window.

NV Energy says the suggested change is an effort to right-size an inequitable cost structure for solar and non-solar customers across Southern Nevada — close to 90 percent of customers do not have solar but pay to cover the costs of those who do.

Reporter Amy Alonzo dug into the details of the dispute.

Global Economic Driver: AI Investment

Source: BCA Research As of Q2 2026

Proposed: An AI “Red Phone”

The U.S. has floated the idea of a dedicated emergency “notification mechanism” for crisis communication between the U.S. and China for sharing information about AI incidents, failures, and miscalculations, especially if it could affect national security, according to a Financial Times report. The topic is one of many on the agenda for the meeting between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping this Thursday.

IBM Pure-Play

IBM is making a $2 billion bet on quantum computing to help reenergize its lagging business — with a little help from the U.S. federal government. Backed by a $1 billion federal check and another $1 billion invested by itself, IBM’s subsidiary Anderon is planning to build the nation’s first “pure-play quantum wafer foundry” in upstate New York.

The Why — IBM is aiming to become the primary quantum supplier for the tech industry. The quantum push follows a brutal July for IBM. Its stock suffered a record 25 percent drop driven by declining legacy hardware sales.
About Pure-play — The facility will serve as a specialized semiconductor fabrication plant dedicated exclusively to manufacturing quantum computing chips and wafers for external clients. It will not design or sell IBM-branded commercial end products, preventing conflicts of interest with the companies ordering the wafers.
About Quantum Wafers —Unlike standard silicon wafers designed for classical logic gates (bits of 0 or 1), these wafers host quantum processing units (QPUs) that contain qubits (e.g., superconducting circuits, spin qubits, or photonic structures).

Historically, quantum hardware companies had to either build their own small-scale, very expensive cleanrooms or retrofit manufacturing runs inside external semiconductor facilities which ran the risk of introducing contamination detrimental to qubit coherence.

Copper Boom

As rising gas prices prompt internal combustion engine drivers to reconsider electric and hybrid vehicles, EV manufacturers are facing a challenge: heavy reliance on copper — which is getting more expensive, thanks to demand for more copper by AI data centers, defense programs, and power grids. The metrics tell the story:

Copper Price Records —Copper prices per pound have surged in recent years, reaching a new high of $6.70 per pound on Monday:

Source: Trading Economics As of 9/21/26

Copper is vital for conducting electricity and managing thermal performance in electric architectures — and nearly three times as much metal per vehicle is needed as for traditional gas-powered cars. The hold up? Opening a new copper mine typically takes 15 to 20 years.

Demand Projections — By 2035, EVs and hybrids are expected to require nearly 6 million metric tons of copper per year, more than double current levels. Electric mobility will account for 32 percent of all new incremental copper demand over the next decade. (Source: S&P Global)
EV Price Premiums — In August, buyers paid an average of $54,813 for a new EV (a 9.4 percent premium over the market average). Meanwhile, Ford recorded a $19.5 billion write-down after scaling back larger EV production plans.
Gas Prices & EV Demand —Gas prices in the U.S. have climbed to an average of roughly $4.50 per gallon (up about 40 percent year-over-year) and as high as $6.16 per gallon in most of the Mountain West, leading 56 percent of surveyed car shoppers to say they are considering a hybrid or EV.

Source: AAA As of 9/21/26

Deforestation Drivers

Across the globe over the last two decades, 128 million hectares of forest have been cleared to make way for agriculture and tree plantations. That’s comparable to the entire U.S. Pacific coast plus Nevada, with about 50,000 square miles to spare:

California (~163,700 sq mi)
Nevada (~110,600 sq mi)
Oregon (~98,400 sq mi)
Washington (~71,300 sq mi)

What has driven the deforestation? A recent paper estimated the contribution of different agricultural products over the last few decades, finding beef production at the top, by far:

Graph source: The Conversation As of 2023

Study source: Nature.com

Arable Land

Global food supply will be of increasing concern until world population tops out and begins to decrease. The planet’s most arable nations stand to benefit economically, and Visual Capitalist provides a helpful graphic:

Rankings table:

Source: Visual Capitalist As of 2023 World Bank data

Math Edu

China ranks first in mathematics testing with an average PISA score of 612, nearly 150 points above the OECD average. Asian education systems occupy seven of the top 10 positions, with Singapore, Macao, and Taiwan ranking in the top four.

Canada ranks 11th globally, while the U.S. ranks 27th — matching the OECD average.

Based on 2025 PISA results

(PISA — the Programme for International Student Assessment — is an OECD global study that measures students’ ability to use reading, mathematics, and science knowledge to meet real-world challenges. Every three years randomly selected 15-year-old students take a two-hour computer-based test. More than 90 countries take part.)

The Big Shrink

Driven by declining birth rates and a shift by a growing number of families into private schools, public school districts across the U.S. are seeing a drop in kindergarten and 1^st-grade student enrollment, according to a report by Stateline.org.

Referred to as “the big shrink” by education practitioners, the downturn in per-pupil funding is creating financial pressure on school systems trying to cover fixed infrastructure and personnel costs.

National Enrollment — K-12 public school enrollment in the U.S. fell by 2.8 percent between 2019 and 2024, dropping from nearly 50.8 million to approximately 49.4 million students. Projections indicate a likely decrease to around 46.9 million students by 2031.
State-Level Enrollment Losses: Between 2019 and 2024, 40 states experienced net enrollment declines.
- West Virginia saw the largest drop at 8.1 percent.
- Hawaii, New Hampshire, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Maine each recorded losses exceeding 7 percent.
- California’s public-school enrollment has dropped nearly 8 percent (~485,000 students) since the 2016–17 school year.
School Closure Acceleration — More than 1,000 public schools closed during the 2025–26 academic year, marking for the fourth consecutive year of increased closures nationwide.
- Austin has approved the closure and consolidation of 10 schools for 2026–27, affecting nearly 3,800 students.
- Cleveland is reducing its district footprint by 29 schools.
- Similar consolidation is underway in Houston, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia.

On the Horizon

MarketWatch calendar: