Question of the Day - 02 September 2017

[Editor's Note: Andrew Uyal, our guy behind the tables, graciously accepted the opportunity to answer this question.]

It's hard to visit Vegas, see all of the glitz and glam of the Strip and downtown, and not wonder what kind of money the people serving and dealing to you are making.

Usually, when thinking about this, people assume either one extreme or the other. On one side, they're just service employees, so they must not make very much. On the other side, it's easy to notice the nice uniforms and assume that at such a classy property, they must be well-paid. Reality for most employees is somewhere in the middle.

Let's start at the front desk. My sources tell me front desk-clerks make an average of $17 per hour (roughly $35,000 per year). The theme with all these numbers is, there's obviously some variance between different tiers of casinos. Front-desk clerks at the Cannery make much less than those at Cosmopolitan.

To me, this particular number is surprisingly high. The main reason I think so is that security makes, on average, even less. Security guards start around $15 per hour (about $31,000 per year). Those who are EMTs or work at a place where they carry a weapon can make more, up to $18 or so. Again, that's an average.

In my experience, visitors and even locals are most curious about the dealers. Dealers get paid minimum wage, plus tips. In Vegas, almost every casino's dealers pool all the tips from all the dealers on all the shifts, then split them among those who worked during that 24-hour period. Every day a few dealers dump out all the toke boxes and count them up in front of the cameras and maybe someone from the cage. The total is divided by the number of hours worked by all dealers, to figure out what they made per hour in tips. Then they're paid accordingly. Cash tips are usually added to and taxed from the dealers paychecks, although some places might still do cash envelopes.

So how much can dealers make? On the low end, $30,000-$35,000 per year. On the high end, $80,000 or more. The majority of dealers in Vegas make $50,000 or less. More than that is considered a decent job.

Pit bosses have a similar spread. They can make as low as $35,000 or as high as $80,000. Again, $50,000 seems to be the cutoff between the jobs people want and the less desirable ones. The difference between dealing and being a supervisor is, if a supervisor gets a 4% merit-based raise, it makes a difference; raises like these can add up after a few years. If a dealer gets that same raise, it's only added onto their minimum wage. Percentage-based raises, which is how most companies do it (if at all) on more than $25 per hour make a lot more difference than on $7.25. So dealers' income is usually consistent, whereas the supervisors' can continue to grow.

To me, the unique thing about the gaming economy is the possibility that someone with no college degree can make a decent living. Whether you're a casino employee like the ones mentioned above or a bartender, cocktail waitress, fine-dining server, or bellman, there are opportunities and pathways to success for people who aren't college-educated that are much harder to come across in other economies.