Fact Pack! NV Hiring Activity Slows Ahead of Election
By Hightower Las Vegas and RCG Economics on October 6, 2026
The National Federation of Independent Business’s September jobs report showed a decrease in hiring activity among small businesses.
- A seasonally adjusted 51 percent of small business owners reported hiring or trying to hire in September, down 5 points from August.
- 32 percent of owners reported job openings they could not fill, down 3 points from August — but still 8 points above the historical average.
- Forty-five percent of owners reported few or no qualified applicants for the positions they were trying to fill. The percent of small business owners reporting “labor quality or availability” as their top operating problem increased 3 points from August to 26 percent, 14 points above the historical average of 12 percent.
In the NFIB press release, Tray Abney, state director for Nevada said, “Many small business owners I hear from are waiting until after next month’s election to make their hiring and business-expansion decisions, which is why November 3 can’t come soon enough.”
Lake Mead and SNWA in the PBS Spotlight
PBS sent a correspondent to Nevada and Arizona last week to learn more about water supply in Las Vegas and the American west for a special segment.
YTD Las Vegas Airport Passengers
August numbers from the Clark County Department of Aviation show passengers year-to-date are down 7.15 percent over the reading last August. Note that the YTD percent change is nearly identical for domestic (-7.2 percent) vs. international (-7.1 percent) travelers:
Source: Clark County Department of Aviation As of August 2026
Data by airline:
Source: Clark County Department of Aviation As of August 2026
States Suspend Fuel Taxes
Several states are temporarily shelving gas taxes. Georgia and Ohio opted for a 30-day halt, Ohio lawmakers voted for a 90-day break, and Indiana renewed its suspension until at least early November. Texas and North Dakota are also giving farmers and commercial shippers a break from surging diesel prices. News sources:
- NCSL: Variable Rate Gas Taxes
- NCSL: Recent Legislative Actions Likely to Change Gas Taxes
- Associated Press: High gas prices are spurring states to waive taxes and regulations amid midterm election
In 2025, Gov. Lombardo proposed a statewide 12-month fuel tax vacation in his recommended budget. The bill did not receive a committee vote in Carson City.
Global Energy Shocks in One Graph
4 in 10 Workers Use AI Every Week
PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2026, for which almost 50,000 workers from 48 countries were interviewed, found that a gap is opening between those embracing AI and new ways of working and those lacking opportunities, motivation or support to acquire new skills.
According to the survey, 64 percent of workers reported having used generative AI tools at work in the past 12 months, up 10 percentage points from the previous year. More than one in five workers said they use AI at work every day, highlighting the speed at which AI tools have reshaped the working lives of millions of people.
A dot.com Boom Study in France
Debates about AI’s labor impact focus mainly on worker displacement, but an economist at the Atlanta Fed says there’s an overlooked risk that can be found by studying the late-1990s dot.com boom: long-term career outcomes of workers entering a booming but unsettled sector.
In a joint study with HEC Paris tracking French engineers graduating from college in 1999 — and using longitudinal career data unavailable in the U.S. — the Atlanta Fed determined that software jobs in France initially paid 8 percent more than traditional engineering roles such as aerospace, but that premium wage reversed: into an average 7.7 percent wage deficit 15 years later.
The share of French skilled workers taking their first job in tech was about 11 percent in 1994. At the peak of the boom, in 1999 and 2001, the ICT sector hired about one-quarter of all skilled workers entering the labor market. Its share of total skilled employment rose from 10.6 percent in 1996 to 14.0 percent in 2001.
The inflow of tech jobs ran “almost entirely through people starting their careers,” and figure 2 below shows this on both sides of the Atlantic. In France (panel A), the tech share of skilled employment among workers in their first four years on the job rose from about 13 percent in 1994 to nearly 22 percent in 2001. Among workers with five or more years of experience, it moved from about 10 percent to about 13 percent.
In the United States (panel B), the tech share of skilled workers under age 30 rose from about 12 percent in 1995 to nearly 17 percent in 2001 before falling back, while the share of workers over 30 barely moved.
Adrian Matray at the Atlanta Fed says the concentration of the dot.com boom — and, if the theory holds, the AI boom — among new entrants matters:
What you learn in your first years on the job is built on whatever technology your employer is using at the time. The people who joined the tech sector between 1998 and 2001 learned the boom’s technologies — and those technologies were unusually experimental.
Technology evolved, and the wage premium enjoyed by those early tech workers began to erode by the mid-2000s — and kept widening after that.
There is much more to the study that might inform concerns about what’s coming amid the AI boom. Check it out here.
Notable numbers:
100 Years of U.S. Labor History in One Graph
Wall Street pro Steve Rattner offers this helpful glance at one-hundred years of change in America’s employment landscape:
Graphic source: @SteveRattner on X/Twitter
Data sources listed at bottom of graphic (view the graphic at NYT here)
You Are NOT Cordially Invited
The share of adults who say they regularly have friends over (aligning with the “Hosting at home” category in the graph below; the baseline in the survey was a frequency of once per month) has declined about 70 percent since 1975, according to a DDB Needham Life Style survey cited by cultural writer Derek Thompson.
All data as of Sept. 2026
The zero times in the past year data are helpful for context:
Data as of Sept. 2026
This graph adds a slew of “at least once per month” activities for a broader view of cultural change in America:
Increased frequency of social activities, graphed:
Data as of Sept. 2026
GDP per Capita
San Jose is winning the GDP per capita game in the U.S., followed by San Francisco (ranked 2nd), Seattle (5th), Boston (8th), and NYC (10th).
The U.S. accounts for 27 of the 40 cities with the highest GDP per person.
Why is Perth, Australia on the top 40 list, you ask? It’s a service and operational hub for Western Australia’s massive mining, oil, and natural gas resource industries.
Corporate Tax Rate Competition
Since the mid-2010s, competition between nations related to “headline” (advertised) tax rates appears to have moderated, according to an IMF analysis. The change has been driven by “stronger anti-avoidance rules supported by major international reforms” to limit domestic “tax base erosion and profit shifting” — and driven by evidence that shifting corporate tax rates in/among competing nations has a net negative effect on the planet’s economic output.
The Secret to Happiness
We end this edition of Fact Pack with some fun science news: Researchers in pursuit of data on causation(s) for human happiness and well-being discovered a surprising fact: more cats per capita correlates with happy humans independent of other factors, including wealth and good health.
Ninety-three countries were included in the study.
Published 9/30/26
Study data sources and time periods
On the Horizon
More cats at Fact Pack HQ!
