Editorial: Tribal casinos make big impact on Oklahoma economy

Here’s a couple of interesting facts gleaned from recent Tulsa World stories about tribal casinos:

A recent study of tribal gambling operations in the state — conducted by Oklahoma City University’s Steven C. Agee Economic Research and Policy Institute and commissioned by the Oklahoma Indian Gaming Association — shows that state casinos directly or indirectly supported 37,000 jobs, which were responsible for $1.8 billion in wages and benefits.

Tribal gambling has an estimated positive impact of $6.3 billion on the state’s economy.

Of 23,000 jobs directly supported by gambling last year, people who weren’t tribal members held 60 percent. Another 11 percent were people who belonged to one tribe, but worked for another. The typical tribal casino employee is a non-Native American woman.

A separate report from the National Indian Gaming Commission shows that revenue at 67 tribal casinos in eastern Oklahoma and Kansas grew 1.8 percent last year to a total of $2.1 billion.

The conclusions we draw are that, overall, tribal gambling has been very good for the Oklahoma economy, and the good has been much broader than the tribes that own the casinos.