Six questions for Jon Wardlaw

By Brian Eckhouse

Monday, Nov. 3, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Jon Wardlaw, Clark County’s assistant planning manager and chief demographer, has watched closely as the brakes have been applied to staggering growth across the valley.

Does the drop in population worry you?

The decline wasn’t severe, just about 10,000 out of 2 million people. Nevada hasn’t lost population before. This is probably a market correction — a response to the increase in the vacancy rate and foreclosures. It’s hard to know whether there’ll be another decrease this year. It depends on jobs.

Have we seen a shift in demographics since the housing market burst?

Earlier this decade, we saw a shift from seasonal to more stable work patterns as the construction boom took off. This prompted a need for more service employees, like grocery clerks. Available jobs probably explains why we saw a Latino migration here from across the West. But if a percentage of the community leaves, like we’ve seen the past year or so, maybe we don’t need as many grocery clerks. The construction and service industries are completely dependent on the economy.

So are these workers the people who have left, or are considering leaving, the valley?

Quite possibly. An economic downturn makes construction and service jobs less critical. So if you’re in construction, you may have to migrate elsewhere — maybe a gas field — if there aren’t any jobs to be had here.

Any other job-related trends?

More people need more than one job to get by.

Are valley residents more trained than before last decade?

There are more highly trained residents, especially in the technology and medical fields. We now have University of Phoenix and Touro University. The Lou Ruvo Brain Institute is coming downtown, among other medical research facilities.

With development at a snail’s pace, what is the planning department up to?

You’d think our workload would be near zero, but it’s not. If developers want to keep projects alive that were approved before the slowdown, and are waiting for the market to improve before building, they are still required to do some building. For example, if a developer had planned to build a 50-home subdivision, maybe they build a handful of homes this year. For us, the workload is basically the same for a one-unit project or a 50-unit project.