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Report on Carson City Recovery

The U.S. Metro Economy report puts Carson City and Reno-Sparks last on the list for jobs regained, but local economic officials say the numbers just don't add up. 

The report says Carson City will be the only metro area that won't create new jobs in 2012, but Rob Hooper with the Northern Nevada Development Authority says the numbers he's seeing tell a different story. 

Hooper says available industry space is down 43% which means there's a demand for manufacturing in the area. He also says an average of four businesses are relocating here from out-of-state each quarter. "We have companies expanding. We have new companies coming here. There's hundreds, if not thousands, of new jobs being created right now," Hooper says. 

A message mirrored by Ronni Hannaman with the Carson City Chamber of Commerce, "to say blanketly that there are no jobs going to be created, I don't buy that at all because there's lots of jobs and there's lots of signs, actually, for people who want to work in this community." 

Hannaman says some of those signs of recovery come from previous studies, ranking Carson City in the top five for retirement, family vacation destinations and real estate recovery. 

"The recovery from the housing market, which never really, we haven't had a problem in the past too much of a because of the fact that we never overbuilt here," Hannaman told us. 

And despite the obvious signs of the economic struggle, like empty office and retail space, local economic officials say there is also an impact with national chains moving in. "They seem to understand that this is not a depressed community. So, it's just all been really interesting to see such a negative study come through," Hannaman said. 

This study also says 600 government jobs were lost between June and November 2011, but officials say those numbers might not necessarily represent the people you think.

"When you lay somebody off, the state does, and they happen to be in Elko, I believe we get the credit for it here in Carson City," Hooper explained. He also said he doesn't think these studies are looking at the whole picture, "when you do these long-distance armchair studies, it's really easy to make a mistake in your conclusions." 

Hooper says one thing Northern Nevada has going for it is education and retraining of people. He says he's seeing people with people with backgrounds in hospitality and construction learning new trades to get the economy moving again.