Casino employee pay scale

After returning from a recent trip with my wife, she asked me what experienced dealers make. My answer was minimum wage plus tips, where tips account for the majority earned, but I'm not sure that is correct. One of the dealers had been working for 13 years at this casino. Can anyone give me the best guess as to annual income for a dealer, shift supervisor, or even a seasoned "eye-in-the-sky" guy or gal? I also assume it's different for a worker at the Bellagio as compared to an Indian casino in Louisiana.

My friends in AC seem to make out okay. They almost all own their own homes, and drive massive SUVs. My one friend who is an executive told me he took an almost 30% pay cut to become a pitboss, but that was a needed step to move up into management.
The one eye in the sky person I know, from Laughlin, told me he was making $1500 a week at the Flamingo Laughlin, but was replaced when Harrahs bought it by people making half that. That was about five years ago.

Dealer's earnings

There is considerable differences in the earning of dealers - depending on where the dealer is employed.

Remember, dealers are employed in a "service industry"

You can serve food at a diner or you can wait tables in a high class gourmet restaurant. The wait staff at the latter earn many times what the former earns.

A cab driver in New York City can earn $300 per day but a cabbie in a small town will not see $100.

Current economic trends have reduced dealer's earnings but at the swankier casinos dealers can expect to earn around $250 / shift. At most properties dealers will be lucky to take home $150 / shift. At small low-stakes venues it can drop to below $75 / shift.

e.g. Dealers at Ballys in Atlantic City have been earning an hourly "toke rate" of about $14, coupled with minimum wage, that equates to about $20 per hour or $160 / shift. Caesars A.C. is an (attached sister-property) and the dealers there earn about $4 / hr. more.

In Connecticut, Foxwoods' dealers are earning about $12 / hr. and are resentful of the dealers selected to work at their faux "Foxwoods MGM" casino who earn about $6 / hr. more. The only local competition, Mohegan Sun, serves a higher-betting clientele, so they too earn more than they do.
Naturally, these dealers also collect minimum wage.

Most, but not all, casino dealers receive minimum wage + tokes, but MGM-Mirage casinos have long paid $7.75 in place of minimum wage, even when minimum wage was rather low.

Dealers make Minimum wage to $10 an hour plus tips. But the tips at certain places like the Bellagjo in Vegas could make the job pay an average of $100,000 a year. A pit boss makes about $20 an hour.

I make money at the casino; I park in the employee lot!

Isn't it interesting that dealers make more per hour than many counters.

CardCounter,

You are confusing Pit Bosses with Game Supervisors (commonly called "floor men")

Not a niggling difference. The Pit Boss is the dude who picks up the phone and calls the "eye" to do a "skills check" on you.

Poker dealers I believe earn far more than normal dealers as they get tipped pretty much every time there is a good pot. I would say the average poker dealer in AC at a 1-2 NL game probably makes about $50/hr

It depends a great deal on the room.
I suspect that $40 per hour is a good estimate for the
Taj' and the Borg' but others are probably closer to $30.
I wonder what the dealers assigned to "Bobby's Room" at
The Bellagio earn ? Probably double / triple these figures.

I imagine that would be incentive for more people to train to become dealers.
Of course depending on how many hours they get in during the week.

I seriously doubt they are making anything close to that. In the first place, how many hands an hour are played? In the second,each dealer only work 40-45 minutes an hour.
People often overestimate the money tipped workers make. There was recently a thread on Anthonys site where someone tried to prove, using math, that the average cocktail waitress made $150,000 a year.

wages

I can tell you that at the Mohegan Sun in Plains Pa that the average Cocktail waitress working 40 hours a week makes about 45.00 an hour, about 1800.00 a week. I can tell you that the dealers make 4.25 an hour plus tips. The tips are pulled by all dealers on the shift you work and then distributed weekly. The average dealer on a prime shift makes about 30.00 an hour. The best job and the highest paying job at any casino is that of a cocktail waitress, they make about 93k a year working full time.

Someone had a link to a publication that listed the toke rates at a ton of Vegas casinos. Huge disparities.

One casino I go to in the Midwest pays floor people $17 an hour. That's the only hard number I've gotten from a floor, and I'm guessing that's a bit above average.

Check out http://www.thedealerslounge.yuku.com, a forum for dealers.

You may find answers in faq's.

Maybe working at Rehab at the hard rock hotel. I watch that show on true tv and some people leave $600 to $1,000 tips the place charges $3,000 to $4,000 minimum with a cabana.

can you elaborate on this part ? It doesn't make sense.

So dealers working during the day get $4 an hour...yet dealers at night earn $30 an hour?

He is saying that all dealers earn a base rate which in this case is $4.25/hour. The dealers on the prime shifts will earn more tips, which will bring their rate up to around $30/hour. Dealers on the other shifts may get less tips and will therefore earn less.

-Sonny-

So prime shift basically means the Dealers working at night time & on the weekends will earn a lot more ?

That seems like quite a drastic change.

Is Las Vegas going to toilet these days? I remember back to 1999 when I heard from one of my dear friends who worked as a BJ dealer in Las Vegas that he made $150,000 a year, most from tips. I can't believe 10 years later, people made less.

Yep, I don't there's any dealer cracking 100k this year. A few places (Aria, Wynn) they may be in the $80-90k range. That's what I'm hearing from several dealers in Vegas.

NO read it again dude.

ALL dealers make a base rate of 4.25. THE BEST SHIFTS make 30/hr base rate PLUS TIPS, and other shifts make unspecified lesser amounts wage plus tips.

Also a joint near me pays 18 an hour for floor, based on a job listing i read a while ago.