Indian Gaming—

Abstract

This study surveyed employment trends in Arizona's Native American casinos and discovered that only at the level of hourly line employees do Native Americans edge out non-Native Americans. In management positions, non-Native Americans continue to outnumber Native Americans. Moreover, a recent decrease in new Native American entry-level managers bodes poorly for tribal self-management. Those trends appear to be a function of tribe size and, according to casino human-resources directors, the lack of managerial skills in most tribal populations. Human-resources officers indicated they were relatively unlikely to find qualified Native American applicants for senior and midlevel management, somewhat more likely to find qualified Native Americans for entry-level management, and considerably more likely to find them for hourly entry-level jobs. Thus all Arizona tribes need to make greater efforts, through mentoring and management-development programs, to increase substantially the numbers of Native Americans in casino management positions. The record of promoting Native Americans to management has been mixed. Of those casinos that provided opening-year versus current-year figures, Native Americans made some advances into senior-management positions since the opening of those casinos. In fact, Native Americans now outnumber non-Native Americans as senior managers at selected casinos (although not for the entire sample). At the level of hourly employees, the percentage of Native Americans has also increased. In the case of entry-level managers, however, the percentage of Native Americans has decreased, from 50 percent at opening to 39 percent today.