The COVID-19 Pandemic Leads to More Job Losses in the Casino Industry – Most American casinos have reopened, albeit in limited capacities, but the COVID-19 pandemic is still wreaking havoc on the gaming industry as thousands of layoffs are announced in some of the larger markets.
Casinos in Las Vegas, Louisiana and Mississippi announced earlier this week that nearly 3,000 casino workers would be laid off in the coming months. Most of the layoffs came from properties owned by Penn National Gaming.
An undisclosed number of undisclosed workers at Penn National’s M Resort and Tropicana Casino received notification that they will be out of work effective August 15. The two casinos are the only Nevada properties owned by the online gaming giant.
The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act (WARN) requires companies with at least 100 full-time employees to provide advance notice of mass layoffs or closings.
Another Las Vegas layoff comes from independently owned Las Vegas Strip casinos.
Sahara Las Vegas also dismissed an undisclosed number of employees and Treasure Island released another 414 staff members, according to a Las Vegas Review-Journal report. A Sahara spokesman told the daily newspaper that the unclear future of the business, thanks to the pandemic, was the reason for layoffs.
The trend is the same in the southeast as casinos on the Mississippi Gulf coast have laid off 1,219 employees who were previously on leave.
Boomtown Biloxi fired 149 workers, IP Casino Resort Biloxi released 903 and Hollywood Casino on Bay St. Louis added another 167, according to the Biloxi Sun-Herald. Penn National Gaming owns the Boomtown Casino chain and stated in the WARN filing that all layoffs were caused by a public health crisis.
“These layoffs at Penn National Gaming are the unfortunate outcome of a sudden, dramatic, and out of our control, COVID-19-related business circumstances,” the company wrote in a WARN notice.
The latest round of Louisiana casino layoffs came almost exclusively from Penn National properties.
Boomtown New Orleans, Margaritaville Resort Casino in Bossier City, Cypress Bayou Casino Hotel in St. Petersburg Mary Parish and the L’Auberge Casino locations in Baton Rouge and Lake Charles laid off another 1,375 employees, according to a report from Lafayette’s The Daily Advertiser. Penn National has four out of five registered casinos. Cypress Bayou Casino is owned by the Chitimacha tribe.
Since the start of the pandemic, nearly 3,000 Louisiana casino employees have lost their jobs.
