Jobs Rural

The table, which seems just barely readable, summarizes employment and wage job growth from March 2007 until March 2008. It is compiled from the Labor Market Review publication of the Department of Workforce Solutions. For rural areas, there is a twist, which I guess has something to do both with economic structure and the techniques that produce the numbers. "Employment" and "Wage and Salary" job figures overlap substantially, but not entirely and therefore are not strictly comparable. Wage and salary job figures are best because they are counted, as opposed to estimated. It turns out the two numbers don't quite behave the same. I will ask wizards about the reasons. Albuquerque is the only one of the state's four metro areas with more wage jobs than employment. Albuquerque has 47% of the state's wage jobs and 43% of employment. 

The table shows the four metro areas and then subtracts to get the rural area figures. This is legit; I asked. 

Statewide, "employment" grew 0.7% during the March-to-March year. Wage jobs grew 0.6%. Albuquerque lost employment during the year and Santa Fe performed well under the state growth rate. Las Cruces, Farmington and the rural areas did better than the statewide performance. This is the performance twist mentioned above. In wage jobs, Albuquerque again performed under the state growth rate, such as it was, but the other three metros all did much better. That left the 26 rural counties to add only 200 jobs during the year. The rural counties have a third of employment and 31% of wage jobs.