What are the odds on the Las Vegas economy bouncing back in 2026?

After a troubling 2025, in which unemployment rose as tourism fell, Las Vegas is primed for a comeback in 2026. But workers on the ground remain skeptical. 

Tourism data from the holidays shows that Sin City regained some ground at the end of 2025, albeit slowly. While metrics like hotel occupancy and room rates were down year over year, the holiday season’s dip was smaller than the city’s summer slip: In June, strip hotel occupancy fell to 78.7%; by November it had climbed to 83.5% – still below 2024’s November figure of 86.5%, but by a smaller margin than the summer gap.

While year-over-year data for November showed 172,100 fewer tourists, accounting for a 5.4% drop in 2025, according to data from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), the margin was smaller than this summer, when June figures showed tourism down 11.3% year over year thanks to 400,000 fewer visitors. 

What can the Vegas housing market tell us about its economy?

These dips have worked their way through the city’s economy, and can be seen in Vegas’ fast-growing housing market, which took a hit as well. Las Vegas Realtors, the city’s largest Realtor organization, reported that fewer homes were sold in 2025 than in 2024, marking the lowest annual sales total since 2007. 

Overall, 28,498 existing local homes, condos and townhomes were sold last year, a small decline from 31,305 in 2024 and a sharp drop from the high of 2021, when 50,010 properties sold.

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER) estimates that the statewide housing market is expected to stagnate, as total housing permits are expected to be down roughly 3% in 2025 before growing by 4.8% in 2026. 

While the drop in tourism didn’t help the local economy or housing market, Las Vegas Realtors President George Kypreos told SAN he sees some encouraging signs for homeowners in 2026.

“Recent trends are moving in a mostly positive direction,” he said. “We’re starting to see a more balanced housing market here after years of a strong sellers’ market that made things more challenging for home buyers.”

The median price of existing single-family homes sold in Southern Nevada reached an all-time high of $488,995 in November, Kypreos told SAN. It dropped a bit from there in the following month, coming in at $470,000 in December. That was 1.1% lower than the previous December, according to Kypreos. 

A racially diverse working-class city that serves as a snapshot of the nation’s economy, Las Vegas has boomed in the past decade, as 123,000 people have moved to the metro area since 2020.

“People have a lot of misconceptions about Las Vegas, historically,” Kypreos said. “Many newcomers and visitors to Las Vegas are often surprised to see what a ‘normal’ community this is. As for the housing market, I’d say it’s less volatile than it used to be years ago.”

Nevada is among the fastest-growing states in the country, ranking sixth in population growth from 2023-2024 according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Is Las Vegas looking at a recession?

CBER also predicts that 2026 will be a far stronger year for the city — one that avoids a recession that many fear is looming. 

CBER director Andrew Woods told SAN he believes that as inflation and interest rates drop, consumer spending and productivity gains will boost the economy.

“The level of uncertainty in the national economy — and how businesses and consumers will make decisions based on that uncertainty — complicates projections, but at this point we don’t project a recession in the near term as some of this may smooth out, given time,” Woods said.

The CBER study projects that statewide visitors will decrease by 0.4% and 4.4%, in 2026 and 2027 respectively, hovering around 50 million visitors.

Other conventions, events and new developments are unfolding for 2026 as well. In early January, Vegas hosted the Consumer Electronic Expo (CES) at the Las Vegas Convention Center, which just completed a $600 million renovation to further bolster large scale events in the space. WrestleMania will come to town in April, and Formula 1 races are on deck for the fall.

The city’s job growth should remain positive, albeit weaker than it has been, over the next decade. As the city works to further diversify its economy outside of tourism and hospitality, hiring is expected to grow in health care, transportation, and technology. Gains in leisure and hospitality are expected to be slower but steady.

“The Nevada economy and its tourism sector will continue to hit some bumps in the road over the next two years, but we believe it will smooth over as businesses and consumers work through the current economic uncertainty,” Woods said.

While economists and real estate experts believe the city will rebound, workers in the city are not convinced. Teddy Pappageorge, the treasury-secretary of Las Vegas’ powerful Culinary Union 226, told SAN that last year was abysmal for the city’s workforce, and he doesn’t see many improvements coming in a short amount of time.

What do Vegas workers have to say about the city’s economy?

Pappageorge noted that the city’s tourism was significantly impacted by the lack of foreign travelers particularly from Canada and Mexico, amid the Trump administration’s escalating immigration policies. 

Some female workers laid off from hospitality jobs have turned to exotic dancing, with places such as Crazy Horse seeing a massive increase in dancer auditions over the past several weeks.

Canadians — who comprise nearly a third of the city’s foreign visitors — have skipped Vegas altogether, with summer bookings down by roughly 20% nationwide compared to the previous year and bookings from Air Canada plummeting by as much as 40% nationwide, costing the national economy $4 billion. 

“If you tell people they aren’t welcome, they simply won’t come,” Pappageorge told SAN. “The international traveler that spends longer and stays longer won’t come. And this administration is doubling down on this chaos.”

International travel has also taken a hit. The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) reported that the United States registered a 6% drop in foreign visitors, while other WTTC reports found that the U.S. was the only economy forecasted to see international visitor spending decline in 2025, equating to a $12.56 billion loss in revenue.

Air traffic into the city was down 9.6% year over year, falling to 4.3 million passengers. Pappageorge said even the large conventions like CES and NFL games did little to attract international tourists. 

“These large events are critical for us, but they still aren’t pulling people. Our members are getting their hours reduced and some are not getting called in to work at all,” Pappageorge said. “Restaurants are not staying open as long as they used to be. When you combine that with the affordability crisis… the average person who goes on vacation thinks twice.”

Cris Barneond, a cook at the Cosmopolitan, told SAN that last year’s tourism decline brought night-and-day changes to his life. 

As an on-call worker, he told SAN he is worried that inconsistencies in his work schedule could force him to sell the Toyota Tacoma he bought last year to make ends meet. 

“Right now times are tough, I use every coupon that I can find. We are trying to stretch everything,” Barneond said. “I do Facebook Marketplace and sell what I can [when I’m not working]. You gotta figure it out in most cases.”

The post What are the odds on the Las Vegas economy bouncing back in 2026? appeared first on Straight Arrow News.

Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief