“The 173% increase figure for Nevada is ONLY feasible if the massive numbers of illegal immigrants working in the Las Vegas housing-construction-market-bubble, somehow managed to qualify for food stamps, and other citizen benefits.”
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Not necessarily, how many did they have on stamps in 2007? If the beginning number is very small it wouldn’t take many to account for a 173% increase.
Yes it would; because the housing boom in Vegas, at it’s height, acted as a self-perpetuating houses=jobs=houses=jobs machine, until the bubble burst, making the local construction trades the hardest and deepest hit segment of the local economy and those trades had a very high component of illegal employment. It is difficult to imagine the reduction in construction jobs NOT comprising a very high percentage of Vegas increases in unemployment.