U.S. Casinos

The national landscape for casino work has changed drastically since the middle of the 20th century. If current trends continue, there will be more and more opportunities in this field.

There is, of course, Las Vegas. The undisputed center of the casino world is still Las Vegas, Nevada and that is not likely to change soon. The city not only has a profusion of gaming establishments, it also has a great range of scale. There are sprawling behemoths like the MGM Grand Hotel on ‘The Strip’ that offers everything from luxury accommodations to top-of-the-line entertainment and there are tiny outposts that only have banks of slot machines and a liquor license.

But outside that singular city there are other locations that have casinos. In the past 20 years, cities like New Orleans and Detroit have joined Atlantic City and tried to get into the casino gaming business. Like a new professional sports venue or concert hall, casinos are seen as anchor developments in downtown areas.

In the late 1980s, the US Supreme Court ruled that American-Indian tribes were sovereign and therefore exempt from state-level gaming law. Since then, American-Indian casinos on and off federal reservations have cropped up in several states. Some are tiny while others are the largest casino-resorts in the world.

The difference in working at these kinds of casinos has to do with the regulations of the states in which they’re located and the scale of the operation. The games played at casinos are nearly universal and the skills needed to succeed in an on-reservation American-Indian casino are the same that will succeed in casinos the world over.