Friday, May 16, 2014

NM Economy: Holding as Nation's Worst

New Mexico continues to offer its citizens the worst performing state economy in the nation.
Today’s monthly Department of Workforce Solutions jobs release appeared about 3:00 P.M. The headline is about the unemployment rate. That’s just absurd. Look at the release, and ,yes, in the second paragraph DWS says we lost jobs year-over-year.
Look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics release, which appeared at 10 A.M. EDT and learn what DWS does not say. See http://www.bls.gov, the top item on the page. We have lost wage jobs, year-over-year, for the fourth month in a row. We are one of two states with year-over-year losses, keeping us in the singular position of the worst state economy in the nation. We also led in month over month decline.
The April to April decline is 4,400 jobs or 0.54% (just over one half of one percent). That is my computation, using the not-seasonally adjusted table for wage jobs.
The BLS says, "The largest over-the-month percentage declines in employment occurred in Maine (-0.4 percent), Wyoming (-0.3 percent), and New Mexico (-0.2 percent)…. The only over-the-year percentage decreases in employment occurred in New Mexico (-0.7 percent) and Virginia (-0.1 percent)." The BLS statement is pasted from their release.
As to the politicians, I annoyed with all of them. DWS is either just dense or, what I suspect, hiding things. The Democrat governor candidates have no clue. Raise the minimum wage? Give me a break. Pandering.
In January UNM’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research forecast 2014 wage job growth of 1.4%. The BBER excuse for bad numbers, typically swallowed whole by Win Quigley of the Albuquerque Journal, is that the statistics are funky and things are better than the numbers show. I think that begs the question. OK, if the numbers are procedurally funky, why, what can be done to fix them and what really is happening?
Year over year sector performance includes: Mining (+1,300, 5%); Manufacturing (-2,000, -6.9%); Financial (+2,200, +6.7%); Professional and business services (-2,100, -2.1%); Government (-2,800, -1.4%)

1 comment:

Greg SMith said...

As one of those people who became recently unemployed in New Mexico, I can say things are just as terrible as the BLS says. There are plenty of jobs in other states however.