job creation

NAI Alliance is pleased to report another key sign of recovery: Carson City’s 2011 industrial vacancy rate of 11.43 percent has improved to 7.14 percent as of Dec. 2014.

Here is the full text of Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval's speech delivered to the Nevada Legislature Thursday, Jan. 15, 2015.

Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Distinguished Members of the Legislature, Honorable Justices of the Supreme Court, Constitutional Officers:

Unemployment in Carson City fell by 2.7 percentage points relative to October 2013, to 6.8 percent, the largest year-over-year decline for Carson City since March 1999, according to figures released Friday by Nevada’s Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation.

More than $161 million was invested in rural Nevada in 2014 by the Department of Agriculture's Rural Development agency to support housing, business and community facilities. Since 2009, the rural agency has provided more than $987 million to strengthen rural Nevada’s families and communities.

Home sales throughout Lake Tahoe continued to slow throughout the first half of the year, while home prices remained steady, according to a quarterly report released by Lake Tahoe-based real estate company Chase International. Despite an 18 percent decline in overall sales volume, the figures are still significantly higher than those of 2012.

Northern Nevada Development Authority was recently awarded a $600,000 Brownfields Assessment Grant by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that will be used to identify underused redevelopment sites in Lyon and Churchill counties.

The assessment grant allows NNDA to evaluate and catalog areas that had been considered environmentally contaminated. The grant will be used as a future road map for redeveloping effected sites and is the first step in creating projects directly geared toward economic development.

Nevada’s unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent in February, according to figures released Friday from Nevada’s Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation. Carson City had the highest unemployment rate among the state’s three metro areas in February at 9.9 percent. Las Vegas had the lowest jobless rate at 8.6 percent.

Nevada’s unemployment rate fell in January to 8.7 percent. January also marked the 37th month of year-over-year job growth, according to figures released Monday by Nevada’s Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation.

The unadjusted jobless rates in Carson City climbed to 10.3 percent, compared to 9.2 percent in December. The Reno/Sparks unadjusted unemployment rate was 9.1 percent in January 2014, which compares with 8.2 percent in December.

Nevada has been picked as one of six locations to be a center for drone development in the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration announced Monday.

As a drone development site, the state would benefit by providing thousands of jobs with an average wage of approximately $62,000; an estimated $2.5 billion in economic impact in present dollars; and an estimated $125 million in annual state and local tax revenue.

With job creation key to Nevada's ongoing economic recovery, Gov. Brian Sandoval and Northern Nevada Development Authority officials announced Monday that the agency's work has led to a milestone, making a $1 billion economic impact across a five county region over the past three years.

The May unemployment rate in Carson City fell from 10.1 percent to 9.5 percent, marking the lowest number of unemployed in the capital city since 2008.

Statewide, unemployment rate fell from 9.6 percent to 9.5 percent, seasonally adjusted, with 131,400 people looking for work, marking the 29th straight month of private-sector job creation on a year-over-year basis and the lowest number of unemployed since the worst of the recession hit the Silver State beginning in 2008.

Republican Lt. Governor Association Chair Brian Krolicki of Nevada and vice chairman Tate Reeves of Mississippi issued the following statement after sending a letter on behalf of 22 Republican lieutenant governors to President Obama and Secretary Kerry strongly urging approval of the Presidential Permit application on the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Five years after Nevada started hurtling toward the worst economic crisis in its history, prospects for a recovery continue to hinge on three key factors: jobs, jobs and more jobs.

The focus on job creation as a way to right the Silver State’s economic ship gained extra prominence earlier this year after Gov. Brian Sandoval challenged Nevada’s private sector to create 50,000 new jobs by the end of 2014.

CARSON CITY – The city of Reno has been selected as one of only 100 recipients of IBM’s prestigious Smarter Cities Challenge grant for 2013.

Partners in the project include the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, University of Nevada, Reno, EDAWN, Desert Research Institute and the Nevada Institute for Renewable Energy Commercialization.

RENO – Proof of Nevada’s importance in the outcome of the horse race that is the presidential election continued to be on display today, with President Obama visiting Las Vegas and GOP Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan making stops here and in Southern Nevada.

Ryan, appearing in front of a crowd estimated by local law enforcement at about 600, continued to push the Romney-Ryan ticket message calling for change, pointing to Obama’s failed efforts at job creation.

CARSON CITY – Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley used a second Senate debate tonight to attack Sen. Dean Heller on issues ranging from Medicare to online poker legislation, while her Republican opponent took a more restrained approach in the hour-long discussion on public television.

CARSON CITY – Forget the tame, staid, policy driven debates seen in most races in Nevada so far this year.

CARSON CITY – Nevada’s unemployment rate ticked up one-tenth of a percentage point to 12.1 percent in August from July, the second month of increases in the jobless rate after hitting a three-year low in May, a state agency reported today.

CARSON CITY – Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., said today that any “green energy” policy that leads to higher electric bills for Nevadans who are looking for work in tough economic times is the wrong energy policy for the state.

“Nobody is anti-green,” he said. “We struggle to compete with the cost of a kilowatt hour when we talk about economic development. And economic development has something to do with jobs.”

CARSON CITY – With U.S. Sen. Harry Reid’s 5^th annual National Clean Energy Summit set to kick off today in Las Vegas, the debate over alternative energy development and the government’s role in its future rages on.

CARSON CITY – A new report from The Council of State Governments exploring the successes that 13 Western states have had with tax incentives to encourage economic growth found that Nevada has fewer such programs in large part because of its tax structure.

CARSON CITY – A broader measure of Nevada’s unemployment picture, including those who have given up looking for work, showed slight but continued improvement through the second quarter of 2012, a federal report released today shows.

CARSON CITY – A pair of Nevada small business owners today said the federal government needs to ease off on its excessive regulatory efforts under the Obama administration if it wants to encourage job growth here and around the country.

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, will visit Barton Memorial Hospital in South Lake Tahoe on Monday as part of a tour visiting health care facilities in California and Nevada. The visit coincides with the FCC's Rural Healthcare Pilot Program, in which Barton Health received funding.
More information on the visit is forthcoming. Check back later today at www.SouthTahoeNow.com. Here is a bio on Genachowski found on the FCC's website.

LAS VEGAS – State senate Majority Leader and 4th Congressional District candidate Steven Horsford, D-North Las Vegas, said he supports the federal health care law that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in late June.

CARSON CITY – About $87 million in state taxes that could be parlayed into 10 times as much to pay for critical road improvements are ready to flow to the state Department of Transportation next year, but there are concerns the money could be diverted to other needs.

CARSON CITY – Washoe County Republican and Democratic Party leaders may disagree on who the best choice is for president, but they agree on one point – Washoe is the “battleground” county in the battleground state that is Nevada.

Clark County is expected to go big for Democrats and President Obama, while Nevada’s rural counties are expected to go strong for Mitt Romney. But Washoe County, where Republicans lead in voter registration by 3,700, has gone for both parties in past elections.

CARSON CITY – The National Retail Federation has launched a nationwide 60-day campaign to raise awareness among lawmakers and the public on how what it calls a loophole exempting online sales from sales tax is hurting local communities and job creation.

If Nevada’s five-member Congressional delegation is any indication, the group has its work cut out for it, with three members opposed and two supportive of the idea to allow states to tax online sales.

RENO – President Barack Obama made a brief stopover here today, visiting with a couple who refinanced their home through a White House initiative helping underwater homeowners who have government-backed loans.

After meeting with Paul and Valerie Keller, Obama urged Congress to expand the Home Affordable Refinancing Program (HARP) to other mortgages as well.

CARSON CITY – Assembly Speaker and 3^rd Congressional District candidate John Oceguera, D-Las Vegas, declined today to say whether he supports the federal health care law now under review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Oceguera, who is termed out of office in the Assembly, said it is premature to comment on the law given the fact that it is awaiting a decision on its constitutionality by the nation’s high court.