If you’ve been looking for a job anytime in the last year or so, it’s probably been pretty tough to not only find work, but just to land an interview. I’ve been there myself.
In the fall of 2024, I started searching for a job while still employed. Over the course of 13 months, I applied to more than 50 jobs and was either rejected or ghosted by recruiters. I reached out to potential supervisors on LinkedIn, I followed up via email, and I applied for jobs with fewer than 100 applicants (many jobs had hundreds of applicants within the first 24 hours).
I received zero job offers and less than a handful of interviews.
Since I was still employed, the stakes weren’t as high. I still had a stable income, and didn’t have expiring unemployment benefits looming over me. Still, I was exhausted. I was desperate to get out of social media marketing and started applying for part-time positions. No one got back to me.
When I finally received a job offer, it was for a role within my current company, one of two open positions. They had passed on me the first time I applied, and didn’t hire me until the department had already lost two people. They never hired someone to fill the other role.
My experience is not unique in Nevada.
The Situation in the Silver State
Nevada doesn’t have enough jobs for every unemployed person in the state. According to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the ratio of unemployed workers to available jobs was 1.5 to 1 in December. Job seekers could be doing all the right things—networking, optimizing their resumes, meeting all the qualifications—and still not land a job.
As of March, 25.4% of unemployed workers in the United States had been out of work for more than six months. According to the BLS, a person is counted as unemployed if they have not worked in the past week, have actively looked for a job in the past four weeks, and are currently available to work.
People who have given up on finding a job, those working part-time because they can’t find full-time work, and those stuck in jobs well below their skill level aren’t reflected in this data.
In a Reddit post earlier this year, I asked whether anyone in Reno, Elko, or Carson City had been struggling to find work after a job loss. Only Reno Redditors responded.
They described layoffs, fake job listings, and application fatigue. “Ghost jobs” — listings that aren’t real or never lead to an actual hire — were brought up by Redditors multiple times.
Employers have admitted to posting jobs that don’t need to be immediately hired, and keeping listings up year round. Job listing sites incentivize this with their subscription pricing.
“I’ve got this $400 a month [charge from ZipRecruiter], so I’m not going to let the job ad just sit empty,” Allison Giddens, co-owner of Win-Tech, told NPR. The monthly charge allows her to post three job ads, so even if there is only one immediate hire, she will fill the other two ads to get her money’s worth.
During my own job search I suspected that many of the jobs that I saw were ghost listings. For example, I have seen one company, The Hamilton Company in Reno, keep listings up on LinkedIn that are months old.
According to a 2023 study by Revelio Labs, fewer than half of all job postings lead to a hire. Taking that into account, unemployed workers may actually outnumber available jobs 3 to 1.
Some Nevadans, including me, once found jobs with ease. Now, we’re submitting dozens of applications, only to hear back from a handful of employers — if at all.
“It’s disheartening,” a college student posted on the Reno subreddit. “Especially when I was used to landing jobs and bouncing back immediately. It’s been months now.”
Looking for work is a very different story now than it was in the early and mid-2010s. As a college student, I switched jobs like it was a sport. I hardly ever stayed with an employer for more than six months, and I never hesitated to quit a job that I had lost interest in. I was always able to have something lined up, and if I didn’t, I found something within a few weeks.
I was able to do that because back then, companies had more stability with economic policy, an important factor when considering staff costs.
“Businesses like to have predictability,” said Elliot Parker, professor and chair of the economics department at the University of Nevada, Reno. “If they’re going to invest in hiring someone, that’s a lot of cost and risk.”
Trade policies and tariffs add another layer of pressure to the labor market. For example, Parker said a trade war with Canada and President Trump’s suggestion to turn it into the 51st state have led to a decrease in Canadian travelers to Las Vegas, which ultimately hurts the economy in Nevada.
“Canadian spending supported some 43,000 jobs in the region,” Stephen Miller, an economics professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Last year, local media reported that Wynn Resorts in Las Vegas delayed a remodeling project at the Encore Las Vegas to determine how tariffs could impact project costs—possibly delaying employment or work for laborers for at least nine months.
After calculating that the remodel expense went up 10% from $300 million to $330 million, Wynn Resorts is expected to begin the project this spring.
“If the tariff is one thing today and another thing tomorrow, and you think it’ll be a third thing the next day, how do you make investments?” Parker said.
The Trump administration has threatened, delayed, canceled, or enacted tariffs 75 times since 2025, creating unpredictable costs for companies. That uncertainty makes it harder for businesses to commit to hiring.
Some employers on Reddit said finding workers is just as difficult as workers finding a job, noting that candidates sometimes interview poorly or drop out of the hiring process altogether.
“I’ve set up probably 15 interviews in the last three months…then the interview comes and goes, and they just don’t show up,” one employer on Reddit said.
While I do my best not to ghost employers, I have applied to jobs out of desperation. When I received invitations to interview for those roles, I wasn’t excited and I questioned myself during the whole hiring process.
Does this company align with my values or my goals? Would the labor be worth the pay or would it leave me just as burned out as my current job? I didn’t want to end up in the same situation at a different place.
In the end, I rescinded my applications.
In one exchange on Reddit, a potential employer said an open position was eliminated and its responsibilities were distributed among existing staff.
AI is also contributing to hiring uncertainty. Entry-level jobs and roles with routine tasks are increasingly being automated by AI.
“These [routine] tasks include writing, coding,and problem-solving,” researchers said in a 2024 Harvard Business School study. “At the same time, generative AI has the potential to complement labor in tasks that require creativity, judgment, and advanced reasoning.”
This is especially visible in social media manager roles, a job I have done for the past two years. In the job, I increasingly leaned into AI tools to lighten my workload, which was increasing at the same time. Social media management isn’t just scheduling posts, it’s editing content, managing engagement, and interpreting data—all while also creating graphics and videos on a never-ending cadence. Popular tools like Hootsuite and Sprout Social now use AI to write captions, respond to followers, generate analytics reports, and recommend optimal posting times. Meta platforms, like Instagram and Facebook, have these tools built in.
What was once considered an entry-level role has increasingly shifted toward mid- or senior-level expectations, with multiple responsibilities folded into a single position.
My work as a social media manager was never ending. Even if AI helped me get my work done faster, I noticed the work had less of a human touch and all that extra time I gained was immediately filled by other projects and more responsibilities.
“In a world where AI is reshaping workflows and productivity, firms are leaning more on talent to adopt and deploy these tools, while leaving juniors out of the equation,” a Revelio Labs study concluded.
What jobs are available?
Over the past decade, Nevada has worked to diversify its economy into technology, transportation, and advanced manufacturing, with the goal of creating “high-paying jobs for all Nevadans.”
Lithium mining, data centers, and companies like Tesla and Panasonic have created thousands of jobs. However, the state of Nevada helps subsidize those industries through tax abatements, while still relying heavily on traditionally lower-paying jobs in the hospitality, gaming, and service industries.
As of February, leisure and hospitality accounted for 22.7% of jobs in Nevada, followed by trade, transportation, and utilities at 18.6%, and professional and business services at 14.3% according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Wages in many of these industries fall short of a livable income in Nevada’s metropolitan areas, according to BLS occupational employment data published by Nevada Workforce.
Recent data show that the median wage across the state is $22.33 per hour.
“The [employers] hiring are paying so little I’d rather them go bankrupt,” one Redditor said.
That pay disparity is significant, because Nevada is the most unaffordable state in the Mountain West and the fifth most unaffordable in the western United States.
“We’ve got an affordability problem,” Parker said. “We have a higher percentage of people working in services and fewer people with college degrees.”
Much of Nevada’s work does not require a college degree, contributing to lower wages and fewer opportunities for those who pursued higher education. Some residents have opted to leave the state or pursue freelance careers instead.
Three Nevadans, Three Situations
Reno resident Andrea Icard, 29, worked remotely as a graphic designer for a Colorado-based tech company before being laid off last summer. Before her unemployment benefits ran out in February, she posted her portfolio to the Our Town Reno Instagram account. She now freelances to cover rent.
Charlie Sakmar, 23, graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno in May 2025 but did not secure a job until April of this year. After months of applications, final-round interviews, and networking, he landed a paid internship – in Wisconsin.
Jordyn Owens, 30, Reno’s City Artist in 2025, has decided to leave the state. After her employer closed the business in December, she became unemployed and is now planning to pursue creative opportunities in the Bay Area.
Over the coming months, the Sierra Nevada Ally will follow their stories as they navigate opportunities beyond Nevada’s stagnant labor market.