As the sun sets over Las Vegas, Nicole Williams gets down to business, serving drinks behind the bar of an opulent hotel on the city’s infamous strip.

But life for Ms. Williams, 45, and other service industry workers who form the quiet backbone of Vegas’ booming economy, is far from luxurious.

“When you’re shopping for a big family like mine, it’s hard here,” she told the BBC as she shopped for groceries and took the children on dates around town.

The mother of seven children, ranging in age from 10 months to 16 years, said she often fears she is buckling under the weight of the economy.

From skyrocketing food prices to gas, Ms Williams said she has had to cut back on holidays as well as soccer and gymnastics lessons for her children, which would force her to stretch an already strained household budget.

“We haven’t been able to do the things we want to do,” she said. “I want a future for my children.”

She is not alone. In dozens of interviews with Las Vegans working in vital local industries, from construction and casinos to restaurants and bars, low-wage workers from across the political spectrum told the BBC that kitchen table issues – particularly affordable housing and care expensive children – are what will determine how they vote on November 5.

Those voters are what Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are hoping to win over in Nevada, a hotly contested battleground state where the two remain trailing in the polls.

To court low-wage workers, Harris and Trump have presented starkly different economic visions, including competing anti-poverty policies that could help shape the financial security of millions of families.

But victory in unpredictable Nevada — one of the key states that will determine who becomes the next president — will be won by only a small fraction of undecided voters there, political insiders say.

The data show that about a third of the state’s voters identify as independents, with an August New York Times/Siena poll of likely voters showing a slight majority of independents are Republicans (43%) compared to those who are Democrats (39%) .

“Nevada is not a blue state,” said Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer of Culinary Union Local 226, referring to the traditional color of the Democratic Party (Republicans are red).

The political powerhouse backed Harris.

“We’re barely purple. If the election was held right now, Trump wins, we think,” he added.

“Everything was cheaper”

Despite the booming business, Nevada’s unemployment rate was the highest in the nation at 5.6 percent in September. In Las Vegas, where three-quarters of the population live, the figure was even higher, at 5.9 percent.

The state has also been hit particularly hard by the pandemic, with unemployment rising to about 30 percent — which state Democratic Chairwoman Danielle Monroe-Moreno described as a sign that “when the country cools down, Nevada has the flu.”

However, as the US economy recovered, Trump and Harris pursued contrasting economic policies to ease some of the burdens on low-income workers. Harris has promised to expand many of the Covid-era policies that President Joe Biden pursued when he took office in 2021, including health care and housing subsidies and reviving the $6,000 enhanced child care tax credit.

Trump has touted the idea of ​​renewing his 2017 tax cuts – which are set to expire next year – while imposing high tariffs on foreign imports, which he says will reduce poverty and boost economic growth.

“Five dollars is no longer $5, and $100 barely buys you groceries,” said Fermin Gonzalez, an unemployed Mexican-born former restaurant worker who lives in Las Vegas.

At 60, he fears he will have difficulty finding work again. “We used to make money here. People are unhappy.”

To try to win over like-minded voters, both parties are relying on the door-to-door campaigning efforts of allied get-out-the-vote groups.

The Culinary Union — the state’s largest union, which represents a variety of occupations in the hotel and food service industries — has dozens of teams knocking on doors to support Harris and other Democratic candidates.

On a September afternoon, two members walked for hours in 40C (104F) in an unassuming neighborhood in north Las Vegas, close to the edge of the city, where the city gives way to desert and rocky hills.

“Things are very hard. We feel it a lot,” said Olga Mexia, a Mexican immigrant and mother of five who works as a housekeeper at the Signature Hotel on the strip.

“We get paid a lot less for everything. (four years ago), the rent was less, the food was less.”

“I had to have two jobs at the same time to make it work. I’m campaigning for my family. At least Harris has a real plan,” added Ms. Mexia, sheltering from the sun under a tree as her teammate he was knocking on a door. “That’s the kind of stuff people want to talk about.”

The Battle for the ‘Tipping Tax’

One economic proposal where both candidates overlap is eliminating tip taxes — a concept that has found a receptive audience among service workers in Nevada, more than half of whom are Latino.

More broadly, Latinos make up about 30 percent of the state’s population, along with 19 percent of business owners. Given how close the state — and national — elections are likely to be, both parties increasingly see mobilizing Latino voters as key to their victory.

Ms. Williams, the bartender — who says she is “100 percent voting Trump” — earns $20 an hour, but said tips are her main income, bringing in as much as $250 on a good night. But even with using coupons, bargain hunting, and budgeting a weekly menu plan, it’s not enough.

Trump first floated the idea at a rally in Las Vegas in June. In August, he highlighted the plan again during a stop at a Mexican-Italian fusion restaurant on the city’s west side.

The restaurant is owned by Javier Barajas, a Mexican immigrant who first crossed into the US illegally in 1978 and found himself in Las Vegas almost by accident after being separated from his traveling companions.

Once a dishwasher, Mr. Barajas is now an integral part of the community and owns a string of popular Mexican restaurants that employ an overwhelmingly Latino workforce of more than 500.

“My waiters earn $12 – the minimum wage. I’m not saying that as if it’s a lot. It’s hard. Every time I go to the gas station I end up spending $100,” he told the BBC, switching between English. and Spanish in a corner of his restaurant.

Mr. Barajas, an outspoken Trump supporter, says he believes eliminating tip taxes would greatly help his workers with day-to-day expenses while having minimal impact on him as an owner.

“This idea is interesting to people like them,” he said of his workers. “I totally understand why.”

Harris supported the no-tip policy at her own rally in Las Vegas in August, though in her case it’s tied to raising the federal minimum wage to $15.

Experts have warned that cutting tipping taxes may have minimal benefit to the overall U.S. economy, and the Fiscal Foundation estimated that any change could cost at least $107 billion. Any changes would also have to be passed by Congress.

“I’m drowning”

For many working-class Las Vegans, inflation and rent pressures are compounded by childcare concerns.

Child care in Nevada is more expensive than anywhere else in the U.S., with the average family spending nearly $26,000 a year — more than a third of the median annual income, according to a July report from the state’s Office of Workforce Innovation.

Harris campaigned on the promise that childcare costs would be capped at 7 percent of family income, along with a $6,000 child tax credit. Trump has so far offered no specific plans, although his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, has proposed increasing the child tax credit to $5,000 from the current $2,000. Vance skipped a vote in August on a failed Senate bill that would have expanded the child tax credit for low-income families.

Among those feeling affected is Dominic Richmond, a single grandmother in her 50s who cares for four young children with special needs – aged one, four, six and nine – and a mother with dementia who lives nearby.

Ms. Richards lives in a small two-bedroom apartment that costs her $1,600 a month. While working part-time as a real estate agent – a job she said “doesn’t leave money” – and 16 hours a week at an airline, she said the combined costs of childcare, rent and prices mari have left her in a difficult situation.

“When you put it all together, it’s like a hurricane coming at you,” she said, wiping away tears from the offices of the Children’s Cabinet, a local nonprofit. “Only I do all this. You cannot function in society on “just me”.

Once a week, Ms Richards heads to a busy food bank, which she says now mostly distributes self-heating military-style ration packs – which usually include a small main course, crackers or cheese, dessert and a powdered drink – to help with feeding. her family. She asks acquaintances for help, most of the time without success.

Ms Richards says she is “not a political person” – she just wants a candidate who will help families like hers.

“I just hope that when November gets here, we’ll see somebody start helping where help is needed,” she said. “By the end of this year I will probably be homeless. I exhausted everything I could.”