The Gold Coast Bulletin reports this morning that Las Vegas may become Coast’s sister city:
MAYOR Tom Tate will today officially ask Las Vegas to become a sister city of the Gold Coast and says our region’s tourist strip can learn a lot from the US.
I’ve previously posted on why the Gold Coast shouldn’t try to imitate Las Vegas (Does the Gold Coast need to compete with Vegas and Macau?). The Gold Coast needs to diversify its economy rather than become more dependent on the discretionary spending of fickle tourists. Due to its dependence on spending by visitors, the Las Vegas economy has suffered more than most in the US, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates (Local Area Unemployment Statistics):
Queensland regional unemployment rates can be found at OESR’s website. The Gold Coast unemployment rate is currently around 6.3 per cent, which is much lower than Las Vegas’s unemployment rate of 11.8 per cent.
Queensland Economy Watch 
Hear hear to that Gene…we could say the same thing about Cairns. Today’s jobs numbers for Qld look highly suspect to me with PR falling so sharply and unemp rate falling despite a big drop in jobs. Any thoughts as to possible reasons?
Possibly noise in the data. The State estimates are becoming increasingly unreliable. I think the ABS cut the sample size a few years ago in response to budget cuts, and I’m unsure if they’ve restored it. The ABS only seems to be committed to generating reliable national numbers unfortunately.
Gene, interesting to see the bizarre data identified last month for QLD has effectively been reversed out this month! See http://www.conus.com.au/_blog/Economics_Updates/post/Strong_jobs_data;_QLD_corrects_after_last_month_(as_predicted)/ for my take.