Those with Las Vegas retail jobs will be getting some help this holiday season.

Local businesses in Las Vegas are launching a campaign to encourage people to shop locally this season. According to an article by KLAS-TV, local money means local jobs and at the same time helps struggling local governments, which depend on tax revenue. The campaign is being spearheaded by the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, and soon residents will see a public service announcement featuring Mayor Oscar Goodman.

“I want them to know that we really would like them to spend their dollars here not send them there,” Goodman said in the article. “We’re trying to say before anyone spends any money, think in terms of what impact it is going to have on our community and whether it is going to be beneficial to us. So that money will go toward schools and social services and everything else that happens in this great city of ours.”

Las Vegas is following in the footsteps of other places, such as Rhode Island, that have similar initiatives. The Vegas chamber is emphasizing that it wants people to shop at both locally-owned businesses and also at large national chains that have a physical presence in Las Vegas. However, if that national chain has a Web site, the chamber is encouraging local shoppers to visit the store instead of buying online.

Especially in places like Las Vegas, many employees’ jobs depend on local customers.

“A lot of people have questions, they don’t know how to do this - little things that people don’t know, we know so we help them out,” Isaac Domenzain, a technical service employee at local business PC Laptops, said in the article. “It is pretty cool. They go out with a smile on their face.”

Store Manager John Moxon adds that local while many good bargains can be found online, local merchants can bring something to the table that out of town vendors can’t provide.

“Once we talk to them about the fact that we are service oriented,” he said in the article. “We are about relationship building. It is not so much about selling a product as it is selling a relationship and selling that one-on-one service. And that is something you don’t get in an environment where you are working on the internet.”