March to March, A few Jobs Appear. Feb. to March, none.

None of the other 49 states equaled New Mexico’s wage job performance during March. There were 23 with more wage jobs and 26 with fewer. New Mexico stood alone with no change.
Caveats: The state job performance stated above was for March in comparison to February. The figures are seasonally adjusted.
The year-over-year comparison means more, I believe, than a monthly change.
For the year from March 2012, our job situation continued the performance of January and February and showed a slight increase of 3,800 wage jobs (0.47%) on a seasonally unadjusted basis and 2,200 (0.3%) with the seasonal adjustment. The wage job total grew 3,500 in January and 2,600 in February.
The monthly percentage increase remains below one half of one percent. Maybe having a one percent year-over-year increase would allow saying a recovery of sorts is in place. For now, no.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, Arizona added 45,100 jobs year-over-year for 1.8% growth. Colorado added 58,700, a 2.6% increase for the period. New Mexico added 2,200 for 0.3% growth.
Throw population into the mix and New Mexico’s comparative performance is even worse. While Colorado’s 5.2 million (in 2012) population is “only” 2.5 times that of New Mexico, for the March-to-March year, Colorado added 26.7 times more wage jobs. Arizona’s 6.6 million population is 3.14 times New Mexico’s 2.1 million. Arizona’s 45,100-job increase was 20.5 times New Mexico’s.
For the March-to-March year, leisure and hospitality (tourism, mostly) continued to have the best performance with 2,800 more jobs, followed by finance with 1,100 more. Manufacturing lost 600 jobs and government dropped 700.