Aaron Ford’s ‘Lombardo Economy Is Worse’ Line Collides With the Jobs Numbers

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, the Democratic nominee for governor, left the state on a workday to sit in the Los Angeles studio of Pod Save America and tell a national progressive audience that Gov. Joe Lombardo has made Nevada’s labor market worse. 

In the in-studio interview that aired this week, Ford repeated a false claim he has used for months: that Nevada’s unemployment rate under Lombardo “is higher now than when he took office.” He has made the same assertion on social media, in campaign events, and in ads framing a “Lombardo-Trump economy” that is “failing working families.” 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics say otherwise. 

Nevada’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in July 2026 was 5.0%, according to BLS. That is the lowest the rate has been in over six years, since February 2020. The pitch Ford is selling—that the rate is higher than when Lombardo was sworn in in January 2023—does not match the facts. 

The last time Democrats ran both ends of Carson City, the numbers were worse by an order of magnitude. Under Gov. Steve Sisolak and a Democratic legislative majority, the unemployment rate spiked to 30.1%, the highest figure any state has recorded in the modern BLS series that begins in 1976. When Lombardo took office in January 2023, Nevada’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 5.5%, the highest in the country, according to the figures DETR and BLS published that spring. Later revisions put January 2023 closer to 5.2%.

The latest BLS reading, July 2026, is 5.0 percent—lower than when Lombardo was sworn in, and the lowest Nevada has posted since February 2020, during the Democratic trifecta that ran from 2019 to 2023. Ford’s campaign treats a stubbornly high ranking among states as proof that the rate itself has gone the wrong direction. It has not. 

Jobs tell a bigger story. 

Nevada has added more than 100,000 jobs since Lombardo took office. Total nonfarm employment has climbed from about 1.51 million in January 2023 to a record range around 1.61 million. For much of the last year the state led the nation in job-growth rate even though it is a small labor market. Average hourly wage growth last year was among the fastest in the country. 

The contrast with California is the part Ford did not mention in Los Angeles. 

California’s labor force is more than 11 times larger than Nevada’s. Yet Nevada has added more jobs in raw numbers than California over comparable stretches of the Lombardo years—an outcome that would be impossible if Ford’s narrative held water.

If California had grown at Nevada’s rate, it would have added well over a million additional jobs. That comparison has already been laid out in reporting by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and in prior California Globe coverage of Nevada’s outperformance. 

Despite these facts, Ford has repeatedly told voters Nevada has “one of the worst economies of any state” and has “reigned at the top of the unemployment list” for Lombardo’s entire tenure.

A high ranking is not the same as a rising rate, and it is not the same as job destruction. Nevada’s jobless rate has often sat among the worst in the 50-state list because the economy still leans on leisure and hospitality. High in-migration, a growing labor force, and rapid payroll gains can coexist with that ranking. 

True to form, Ford collapses those distinctions into one more accusation, delivered on another out-of-state campaign stop—the same pattern as his attorney general junkets, including luxury third-party trips now under ethics review.

The counterfeit campaign talking points fits a pattern. Ford has already been caught recycling 2018 law-enforcement footage to imply current police support he does not have; the Las Vegas Police Protective Association issued a cease-and-desist and has endorsed Lombardo, not Ford.

Feelings and frequent-flyer miles are not a substitute for the data. Nevada added jobs at a pace California, with a labor force more than 11 times larger, could not match. Wages rose faster than in most states. The unemployment rate is 5.0 percent—not higher than when Lombardo walked in the door.

Ford still flew to Los Angeles to say otherwise. None of that required a workday trip to Pod Save America’s studio, whose parent company is Crooked Media—an honest name, if nothing else. Nevadans can read the BLS release without the studio lights.