Over the years, I have found that Nevada gaming revenue is a very accurate gauge for the true condition of the economy overall. The Las Vegas numbers also reflect an additional bias toward how the economy is in Southern California.
Basically, in my opinion, the national economy is yucky......as reflected in the gaming numbers.
I think that is generally true during a "normal" economy. If things are rolling along fine, and you start to see Vegas numbers drop, that has historically been a pretty good indicator of things to come.
That being said, this economy is nothing near "normal," and I think we are seeing huge disparaties, depending on the area of the country. Here in MN, for example, our unemployement rate is relatively low (6.5 %), and things seem to be improving day by day. Our neighbors to the northwest (North Dakota) have the lowest unemployment rate in the country, and in fact, companies are begging for people to move up there to fill the open jobs, primarily due to until-recently-unknown pocket of oil underneath the state.
It certainly is interesting to see the "pockets" of recovery, while other areas still suffer heavily.
Brent
