It is now official. The National Bureau of Economic Research has declared that the economy within the United States embarked on a substantial recession back in December of 2007. The bright lights and glamour have been far from immune to this financially sensitive time. The sharp downturn has resulted in many hotel operators having to make unfortunate cutbacks. And the worst is not yet past us.

At the very end of September, officials from several casinos along the strip reported that as many as 3,200 people had lost their jobs. And the numbers for the months of October and November look to be no better, but as of yet, we are still waiting for those numbers to be released.

There has been a considerable effort made to keep the layoffs limited to as few as possible, especially as we approach the most tender and vulnerable holiday season in recent memory. Some operations, such as Harrah’s Entertainment are trying to cut costs through other means like restructuring their departments so that they are able to keep on as many of their employees as possible. Another setback for many of the employees in Las Vegas is that a few casinos have gone so far as to end the 401K-matching programs they had previously had in place for their employees as a way to save some money.

One casino that has taken this seemingly drastic step is Station Casino. They say they were forced to perform this action as a cost-saving measure and call the halt on 401K matching only a temporary suspension. They do not think it will be in place indefinitely.

Tags: economy, Las Vegas Casinos

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 7:51 am and is filed under Las Vegas Casinos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.