Economist says he’s ‘optimistic but not delusional’ on Vegas economy

BY BUCK WARGO LAS VEGAS BUSINESS PRESS
March 11, 2025 – 9:17 am

As the stock market pulled back further Monday amid worries of an economic slowdown caused by new tariffs, an economist has outlined his concerns and bullish prospects for Southern Nevada along with the importance of adding federal lands for future development.

Cameron Belt, an economist with Las Vegas-based RCG Economics, an economic and real estate advisory firm, talked about what’s ahead for Southern Nevada during a presentation at the 2025 Battle Born Economic Summit sponsored by the Keystone Corp.

Zach Walkerlieb, director of the board of directors for Keystone, opened the summit talking about the importance of the push by Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo and others to get Congress to release more federal land.

“We need as much land as possible,” Walkerlieb said. “It’s what will bring affordable housing back to the city of Las Vegas and Southern Nevada along with economic development and diversification.”

In outlining the economy, Belt cited the Federal Reserve of Atlanta’s projection of 2.3 percent GDP growth in the first quarter after a 2.7 percent gain in the fourth quarter.

“The story is underwhelming,” Belt said. “Nothing has really happened the last few quarters. All it comes down to is we’re not in a recession. It’s been pretty flat.”

The real story that people continue to talk about is inflation whose growth rate has slowed since it was elevated in the aftermath of the pandemic and has spiked during the last month. The 3 percent-plus inflation rate in January is well above the target rate of 2 percent by the Federal Reserve. The cumulative impact of inflation continues to harm consumers while average weekly earnings are up 17 percent between January 2021 and January 2025 — lower than the increase of inflation up 20-plus percent, Belt said.

Debt levels came down but are now back up and similar to where they were prior to the pandemic, Belt said. Savings spiked during the pandemic when people couldn’t do much but are now 2 percent lower than they were prior to the pandemic.

“That tells the story of the U.S. economy. Prices are up and wages aren’t up enough. Debt is up and savings are down,” Belt said.

There’s a lot of questions, however, of what’s going on with the economy, Belt said.

The gap between GDP, which measures the economy, and GDI, which measures what all participants make, is at its widest gap since the Great Recession. The first measures what’s spent and the other is what’s earned across the economy, he said.

“For the past seven quarters, we’ve seen GDI lag behind GDP,” Belt said. “It could be a measurement error or something else going on behind the hood. Maybe, we’re spending more than we’re bringing in, which makes sense with the debt obligations going up. For a while, this wasn’t worrying me because at least the two lines were moving together, but the most recent ones had GDP spiking and GDI flattening out. It may be an indicator we’re slowing down quite a bit. That’s what we’ve been seeing with all the job revisions (downward).”

Belt said for those who feel like their real-life experiences are different than what they hear on television, “that’s right. It’s different. It doesn’t mean that the world is ending.”

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