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GOED metrics show growth in assisted companies but Tesla remains an outlier; board asks staff to footnote reports
Summary
At the Feb. 6 meeting, GOED’s metrics presentation highlighted a 42% year-over-year increase in assisted companies (61 in 2024) but noted large investment and job results were skewed by Tesla activity in 2023. The board requested clearer presentation and a footnote to identify outliers.
Alex Backus, northern regional director for the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development, presented the office’s quarterly metrics on Feb. 6, 2025 and said GOED assisted 61 companies in 2024, a 42% increase over 2023.
Backus said several headline numbers were distorted by Tesla’s large projects in 2023: initial jobs and capital investment totals fall substantially when Tesla is removed from the calculations. Backus told the board that without Tesla, investment in 2024 showed a roughly 300% increase compared with 2023 (excluding Tesla) and that average assisted-company wages in 2024 were about $34.08 per hour — roughly $1.50 above the statewide average.
Ray Specht asked that GOED add an explanatory footnote to public metrics so readers could see when large, single projects skew year-over-year comparisons. Backus agreed to add a footnote and said staff was considering alternate reporting that would show metrics with and without outliers. The board also discussed nonstandard abatements, specialty packages for target sectors, and how the agency reports abatement classes on the public slides.
Other highlights Backus presented: assisted-company investment totals for 2024 were approximately $2.9 billion; capital investment and build-out jobs are sensitive to a handful of very large projects; the Nevada Film Office reported 91 productions in the quarter and Apex Accelerator-supported companies secured about $48,600,000 in government contracts during a recent reporting period.
