Haha, well you asked the right person. I currently live in Las Vegas, and hate it. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but I can answer those questions due to info I get at work.
Home prices anywhere in the valley are still dropping about 40% a year, but I’m starting to see the decline rate slowing from month to month. I’m predicting most of Las Vegas will bottom out around spring of 2012. Investors and corporate buyers are getting rich right now here. Many have bought foreclosed houses and made a $100,000 profit just fixing them up a little and selling them 2 months later.
The unemployment rate here is among the worst in the country, probably only beat by Michigan. It’ll take around the time until you graduate to recover, so it’s probably perfect timing.
The Sands is gone though. The Venetian is there now.

You are asking the million dollar question. We can hope but no one really knows. Hopefully things have bottomed out. With City Center opening there is going to be a lot more empty hotel rooms. That’s not good. They are going to draw on the same customers already coming to Vegas. I doubt they will draw new fresh customers. I guess the technical term would be ” Keep your fingers crossed”

CityCenter is currently hiring for like 7,000 people, you should go to the website!

Las Vegas has been hit hard by the economic downturn. Unemployment is currently at 15.3% and the immediate future does not look good. Too much growth and creative housing loans combined with the high unemployment have contributed to the problems.
Las Vegas depends on the construction industry and tourism. Thousands of homeowners are in foreclosure and construction projects have come to a stop. Visitors and tourists have stopped coming to vacation, since many people no longer have the extra income for trips and extra activities,
Let’s hope that things change in four years. If not, Las Vegas will become a ghost town,full of empty homes and hotels.

Worse before it gets better. We are looking at an additional 30,000 layoffs in construction when the strip projects get finished. There is no where for these guys to go. California is the tourist market, and the job situation there is worsening by the day. People are not spending money like they did before. And you have the problem with “Juice”. Vegas operates on it. “Juice” are your contacts. If you know or are related to Hotel management, then your job prospects greatly improve. All you can do is send in your resumes and start schmoozing.
Good luck

If you are going to college you should know better than to ask a question like this. People speculate wildly on this subject.
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Gaming revenue and non-gaming revenue is down to the 2004 levels. Since that time they opened THE hotel at Mandalay Bay, Wynn and Wynn Encore, Palazzo, M resort, TRUMP plaza, and did major expansions at Hard Rock, Ceasars, Golden Nugget, The Palms. Still to open is City Center, Cosmopolitan and Fountainblue (70% completed) while Echelon is a mountain of superstructure and steel that is being preserved.
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If they persuade the NFL to build a stadium for Monday Night Football in Vegas, or a basketball team to come here, they will get the boost they need. However, the present course is unlikely to see new construction for many years. It is all they can do to imagine absorbing the capacity caused by City Center over the next few years.