One issue with the article is that doesn't distinguish between the statistics for Nevada as a whole, which are totally dominated by Las Vegas's size, and northern Nevada, which has a different economic makeup than sin city.<p>As a recent transplant to Reno I've been very happy with how livable the area is. The University of Nevada -Reno is a solid research university, the town has a palpable belief in itself these days, the proximity to Tahoe makes all sorts of luxuries available, and the economy is both more diverse and better educated than this article indicates (again, Reno != Vegas.) The Tesla deal certainly seems to have spurred conversations that weren't happening a year ago, and I've personally been getting a number of headhunters calling me for local software development work in the last couple of months, which was a pleasant surprise, I was worried I had put a giant railroad spike in my career by moving.<p>The political leadership in Reno and Northern Nevada have been playing a long game for a while to diversify and expand the economy. I considered it very serendipitous to find out how successful they've been since I moved here.