Thousands expected to attend Friday job fair at LV Convention Center
Clark County officials expect at least 6,000 people to attend the Spring Job Fair on Friday as employers seek to hire in a competitive labor market.
About 5,800 job seekers are pre-registered for the job fair, Commissioners Tick Segerblom and Jim Gibson said during a news conference Wednesday. The commissioners, who are hosting the event, hope the fair will end with job offers for hundreds or thousands of Southern Nevadans.
More than 100 employers will use the Friday job fair to interview and hire for 13,000 positions that start at $18 per hour, including tips.
“If you haven’t looked for a job in a while, you may be surprised with what you’ll find this time around,” Gibson, the commission’s chair, said. “In many cases, wages increased, and many employers continue to offer hiring bonuses — some as high as $1,500 just to take the job. With cost of living on the rise, now is the time to find a well-paying job. There is an opportunity for you.”
The push for mass hiring comes from Nevada’s swift but uneven recovery from the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The state’s unemployment rate dropped to 5.1 percent in February, compared with record joblessness in spring 2020. Despite this, there are still thousands of jobs open across the state.
Marchele Sneed, the business services manager in Southern Nevada for the Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation, said multiple factors are at play. Some of the labor force shrank because of early retirements, entrepreneurial ventures, need for child care at home and deaths from COVID-19. Other job seekers may be more thorough in choosing a job with all-encompassing benefits.
“There’s no one answer to that question,” Sneed said. “The pandemic was not like other recessions. A lot of people compare it to that, but it was totally different because businesses closed down kind of sporadically. During the pandemic, everything shut down, and when we reopened, there was still a lot of hesitation to get back into the workforce.”
MGM Resorts International, the state’s largest employer, will be one business in attendance Friday. Justin Fronberg, the company’s corporate executive director of talent acquisition, said previous job fairs sponsored by the county and state have resulted in hundreds of on-the-spot job offers, and he expects the same of Friday. The company expanded its possible benefits to include day care and online college degree programs, among others.
“Las Vegas and the hospitality industry is recovering fast,” Fronberg said. “Visitation continues to rise at our properties on the Las Vegas Strip. As a result, we’re seeking to hire new employees as quickly as we can in order to meet business demand and provide the best possible experience for our guests.”
Beyond on-site interviews, staff from One-Stop Career Centers and Nevada JobConnect can provide resume checks and resources on no-cost employment training and help. The Convention Center will have laptops and printers available at no cost.
Job seekers can pre-register for the fair, running from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Las Vegas Convention Center’s west hall, at nvcareercenter.org/
McKenna Ross is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Contact her at mross@reviewjournal.com. Follow@mckenna_ross_ on Twitter.