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Nevada’s Poor Ranking When It Comes To The Treatment Of Children & Young Adults
* Nearly 17% of students are English language learners.
Nevada ranks 47th in the nation for high school graduation rates.
Nevada ranks 47th in the nation in per-pupil operational funding.
Nevada ranks 50th in the nation for high school graduates age 25-29 who have completed a bachelor's degree or higher.
Nevada ranks 47th in nation for young adults who have enrolled in or completed college. (WestEd, 2005)


Nevada Homeowners Struggling With Their Mortgages
*Foreclosure filings were reported on 16,798 Las Vegas properties in July of last year, one in every 47 housing units, according to RealtyTrac. That's more than 7.5 times the national average and the highest foreclosure rate among metro areas with a population of at least 200,000. (Las Vegas Review Journal)
*Nevada started 2010 leading the nation in the rate of foreclosure cases again and
this marked the 37th consecutive month that Nevada has led the nation in the rate of foreclosure filings (Las Vegas Sun, February 2010)


Economic Impact of Climate Change on Nevada
* Nevada's economy will be most affected by available water resources
* Nevada is the driest state in the nation
* Some two million people in Las Vegas alone depend on Lake Mead for daily water needs and the Hoover Dam provides energy to roughly 1.3 million people in Nevada, Arizona, and California (US
Bureau of Reclamation 2006)

Wages, Employment and Unemployed Nevadans
* Unemployment rose in 27 U.S. states in August, with California and Nevada reaching record levels of joblessness. (Sept. 18 Bloomberg)
* Wages are down 16 percent for companies with greater than 500 workers. Companies with employment between 50 and 500 are down 13 percent, while companies with fewer than 50 workers paid 8.1 percent less in wages in the second quarter of 2009 compared to the same period a year earlier. (Recruiting Nevada, December 09)
* An industry breakdown shows Nevada’s leisure and hospitality sector, a driving force of the state’s economy, continues to struggle. The industry reported 302,500 jobs in November, 6,300 fewer than in October. In the past year, 20,400 leisure and hospitality jobs have been lost. (Business News, December 2009)
* Over the year, the state has lost 27,100 construction jobs, about 1,100 of those since October. (Business News, December 2009).
* A Washington think tank said Nevada had the highest unemployment rate among Hispanics in the U.S. in the second quarter of 2009. (Fox5 Las Vegas)
* The Economic Policy Institute, a labor-leaning economic think tank, said in a report that the state's unemployment rate among Hispanics was 16.4 percent. (Fox5 Las Vegas)
* 83,700 jobs had been lost in Nevada in 2009 by July and when unemployment hit 12 percent in June, it was the highest rate ever recorded in Nevada. The only sector that doesn’t seem to have been hit in Nevada is mining, which according to Schwer has not been adversely impacted. “Prices are high for gold and other precious minerals and I suspect if you look at data there you’ll find no change.” (Nevada Business, September 2009)
* The Nevada Legislature has enacted legislation that temporarily revises the rate of the modified business tax. For the modified business tax, previously imposed on employers at the rate of 0.63% of wages, the legislation reduces the rate to 0.5% if wages paid by an employer do not exceed $62,500 in a calendar quarter. If wages exceed $62,500, the amount of the tax for that calendar quarter is $312.50 plus 1.17% of the amount of wages exceeding $62,500. The new rates become effective July 1, 2009, and apply to taxes due for calendar quarters ending on or before June 30, 2011. ( S.B. 429, Laws 2009, effective as noted.)

State Sales Tax, Gaming Tax, Business Tax
* Gaming is taxed at 6.75% and provides 48% of state tax revenue.
* Other states with legalized gaming have much higher taxes on gaming revenue than Nevada, with the average in the U.S. at 20 percent.
* Assembly Bill 552 raised the Local School Support Tax from 2.25% to 2.60%. Since this tax is collected as part of the Sales and Use Tax applied to things we buy, it effectively raised the overall rate by .35%. Here's how it works out by county:
• Carson City 7.475%
• Churchill 7.600%
• Clark 8.100%
• Douglas 7.100%
• Elko 6.850%
• Esmeralda 6.850%
• Eureka 6.850%
• Humboldt 6.850%
• Lander 7.100%
• Lincoln 7.100%
• Lyon 7.100%
• Mineral 6.850%
• Nye 7.100%
• Pershing 7.100%
• Storey 7.600%
• Washoe 7.725%
•White Pine 7.475% (Nevada Department of Taxation)
* The Nevada Legislature has enacted legislation that temporarily revises the rate of the modified business tax. For the modified business tax, previously imposed on employers at the rate of 0.63% of wages, the legislation reduces the rate to 0.5% if wages paid by an employer do not exceed $62,500 in a calendar quarter. If wages exceed $62,500, the amount of the tax for that calendar quarter is $312.50 plus 1.17% of the amount of wages exceeding $62,500. The new rates become effective July 1, 2009, and apply to taxes due for calendar quarters ending on or before June 30, 2011. ( S.B. 429, Laws 2009)
* According to an analysis for the group by Robert Ginsburg, director of the Chicago-based Center on Work and Community Development, the poorest 20 percent in Nevada pay an average of 8.3 percent of income into the state general fund, while the wealthiest 1 percent pay just 2 percent of income, on average (Las Vegas Review Journal, January 2009)
*The massive multinational mining corporations that are doing booming business in the gold mines of Northern Nevada deduct everything from insurance to marketing from their gross production revenue, so that some years they report zero net proceeds, the report finds. The mining industry, according to the report, experiences an effective tax rate of 0.5 percent. (Las Vegas Review Journal, January 2009)