A number of factors affect the earnings of blackjack dealers, the principal ones being experience and skill level, appearance and personality, and place of work (which is greatly influenced by the first two factors).
All full-time blackjack dealers work the same number of hours -- a 40-hour week. Many casinos pay the minimum wage of $5.15 per hour, but some pay more. For example, Coast properties like to instill a sense of loyalty in their dealers and start them at $6.50 an hour, while some casinos may go as high as $7 or even $7.50. Even at those establishments, however, the basic take-home pay won’t make you rich. What transforms that wage into something you can actually live on is the tokes, and that’s where the big differences come into play, depending on where and what shift you work.
In most casinos, all the tokes in the pit are pooled, then divided equally among all the dealers across all the table games. Of course, the high-end properties on the Strip tend to rake in a much bigger pool than local and downtown joints, so jobs there are the most desirable and the hardest to get. If you're a beginner working in one of the break-in casinos, you won’t make anything like the daily tokes of someone working at Wynn Las Vegas or Mandalay Bay, but you can maximize your potential earning power by being presentable and pleasant. That will help you get hired at a slightly higher level establishment than the bottom-rung break-ins, plus it encourages players to be more generous toward you.
A monthly publication called The Dealer’s News, aimed at industry professionals, lists the average daily tokes for a range of different properties around town. In general, the tokes are fairly consistent from day to day at each casino, but occasionally they’re significantly skewed by a big holiday weekend, a special event like a high-profile boxing match, or by a George (generous) whale or celebrity -- Kerry Packer and Ben Affleck both have reputations for giving huge tokes (the former once paid off a dealer's mortgage for her).
Here are some daily averages, to give you a ballpark idea:
May 2005:
Mandalay Bay -- $240 Westin Casuarina -- $100 Orleans -- $250 Las Vegas Hilton -- $150 Texas Station -- $120 Plaza -- $50
June 2005
Treasure Island -- $165 Flamingo -- $130 California -- $110 O'Sheas -- $80 Western -- $30
