Economic studies for White Pine County, built on the county's own numbers

What the numbers show

White Pine County runs on roughly 4,400 covered jobs across about 270 establishments, at an average annual wage near $71,100, a high rural figure that tracks the county's dominant industry. Mining and extraction employs people here at more than eighty-five times the national rate and is the largest employer by far, the economic weight of the Robinson copper mine outside Ely. Public administration is the second-largest sector, running at nearly three times the national share, driven in part by the state prison at Ely, followed by accommodation and food service, retail, and education. Agriculture and ranching run at more than two and a half times the national rate. Employment rose about 1.1 percent over the year.

The White Pine County economy

White Pine County runs on copper. The Robinson mine outside Ely is the anchor of the economy, giving the county one of the highest mining concentrations in the state, and the state prison at Ely explains its high public-administration share. Ely also carries a distinctive heritage-tourism economy built around the Nevada Northern Railway, a preserved short line that draws visitors to eastern Nevada, and ranching remains a working part of the surrounding country.

A mine-life extension at Robinson, a new mineral venture, a tourism or hospitality project tied to the railway and the surrounding public lands, or a ranch operation all turn on the same two questions: what the project genuinely returns to the county, and whether it pencils under the real conditions of a remote county whose economy leans heavily on one mine.

A project we could put through the engine here

The economic question that matters most in White Pine County is the future of the Robinson copper mine near Ruth, west of Ely, operated by a subsidiary of the Polish company KGHM and the anchor employer of the entire county. A mine-life extension there, worked through the federal environmental review that a plan of operations requires, would carry the local economy for years, and its payroll, supplier spending, and county revenue are effects a community will want measured honestly before it counts on them, with genuinely new activity separated from what would have happened anyway. The Nevada Northern Railway, a preserved short line that now draws heritage-tourism visitors to Ely, is a second and very different economic engine, the kind of visitor draw whose spending a county can also put through a study.

Public-data path: regional input-output multipliers, free-data regionalized or drawn from a purchased BEA RIMS II order where a project supplies one, BLS QCEW and Census LODES for the local labor base, USDA NASS for ranching, and the federal environmental-review record for the Robinson mine along with the Nevada Northern Railway's public visitor figures.

What we do for White Pine County

We produce the study first: economic impact (what a project brings to White Pine County, in jobs, output, and tax revenue, with local leakage handled honestly), feasibility and viability (whether it should move forward, measured with the finance a lender runs), and fiscal impact for public budgets and grant applications. Every engagement returns a full report, a one-page brief, a reviewer pack, and a decision package.

And if a study is already in hand, we review it: we inventory its quotable claims, attach the evidence, and tell you plainly what survives review before you quote it or fund against it. More on reading a study before you rely on it.

Local, and grounded in the record

National firms fly in, bill the travel, and price a county like White Pine out of the analysis it needs. We work across the interior West, we can be on-site, and we build every study on the county's measured federal record, the same BLS and Census data behind the numbers above, so the result traces to a public source and survives scrutiny.

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