HENDERSON, Nev. — By any measure, it should have been a cause for celebration in a place that surely needs one. The Census Bureau reported that Nevada grew by 35 percent over the last decade, making it the fastest-growing state in the nation.
The Aria Resort and Casino, part of the $11 billion City Center complex on the Las Vegas Strip, opened in December 2009, after the recession began hitting the gambling industry.
Population: 2,700,551
Change since 2000: An increase of 35.1 percent
Nevada will gain one seat in the House of Representatives, giving the state four seats, its most ever.
Foreign-born residents make up 18.7 percent of the state's population; 27.5 percent speak a language other than English at home.
Median age: 35.3 years
Families below the poverty line: 8 percent
Median value of owner-occupied homes: $275,300
The word "nevada," in Spanish, roughly means snow-covered.
Nickname: the Silver State
Instead, it was another reminder of how bad things have become here, and how exhausting a decade this state has endured. This was the boom capital of the country — which explains the census report — until the economy collapsed in 2007. People started moving out, chasing jobs or escaping a house market with the highest foreclosure rate in the country. Unemployment here is now 14.3 percent, the highest in the country.
“People come for the good jobs and the good life, and if that’s no longer here, they are gone,” said David F. Damore, an associate professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “People are just moving out.”
The state demographer, Jeff Hardcastle, estimated that Nevada had lost more than 90,000 people since July 2008, and expects the decline to continue through next year. He said that before 2007, Nevada had been the top-growing state for most of the past 20 years.
People are leaving in search of more prosperous economic climates. But analysts said the state’s population had been hurt by a declining birthrate, not uncommon during tough economic times, and illegal immigrants leaving, or at least avoiding census takers as public attitudes toward them turned harsh.
Here in Henderson, a place of once seemingly unstoppable sprawl, there were banners Wednesday advertising cut-rate deals on homes built where there was desert 20 years ago. Or worse: places like Vantage Lofts on Horizon Ridge Road, a housing complex abandoned in mid-construction. A pile of exposed glass, plywood and cement, surrounded by chain-link fences, gave testimony to the hopes, and unfounded speculation, of developers.
Indeed, many of the abandoned or underused housing, office and retail developments were built by speculators drawn by what once seemed the prospect of endless growth, the lure of Wild West development and the promise of an economic jackpot. “Prior to 2007, the underlying assumption was, build it and they will come,” Mr. Hardcastle said.
Robert A. Fielden, an architect and urban planner in Henderson, said the state has been particularly hurt by real estate speculators who flipped property for profit and then just walked. “We have never faced anything like this before,” he said, reflecting the despair that can be heard in the voices of even Nevada’s biggest boosters.
“What we are living with now is, we let the free market reign without any controls at all. We talk about the United States being built on capitalism. But this wasn’t capitalism. This was greed.”
The population rankings are based on percentages, rather than raw numbers, which gives small states like Nevada an advantage on lists like this: It does not take many people moving in to produce a big percentage. The Census Bureau found the population here had increased from just under 2 million in 2000 to 2.7 million at the end of 2010.
And there was one very obvious benefit of all this: The size of the state’s Congressional delegation grew by one seat to four.
“We’ve had serious economic setbacks,” said Representative Shelley Berkley, a Democrat who represents Las Vegas. “But even that doesn’t begin to dwarf the enormous growth over the last five decades. I think it’s a very positive thing that we qualified for a fourth seat.”
Yet these numbers seem certain to only encourage the fundamental reassessment that has been going on in Nevada about its economic future, amid evidence that the construction boom that produced so many jobs is gone, and that tourism alone will not be able to make up the slack.
“The real big challenge for Nevada is, what’s going to happen to our growth industries,” Billy Vassiliadis, the chief executive of the advertising agency that represents the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. “That to me is why the future is questionable.”
“At this point,” he added, “I wouldn’t be looking for a fifth Congressional seat after the 2020 census.”
Stephen P.A. Brown, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at U.N.L.V., said any future growth in population was directly related to the state’s ability to rebuild its economy — and, of course, an influx of more people who would contribute to the state’s economic growth. “There is no indication that people are moving back into the state at this point,” he said.
Ian Lovett contributed reporting from Los Angeles.
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