Administration Continues Hiding From Job Reality

Comes the cold water for any overall jolliness that might want to happen as a result of last week’s job performance news. Yes, New Mexico did post the nation’s second largest percentage wage job increase from June to July on a seasonally adjusted basis. Our 4,400 job increase was a 0.5% monthly job jump that tied with four other states behind Montana’s 0.7% Pretty good. And, yes, we did gain jobs from July 2013 to July 2014.
But there is that seasonality. Take away the adjustment for the month-over-month performance and we lost 3,400 jobs, dropping to 806,500 wage jobs in July 2014..
The Department of Workforce Solutions continues to ignore these ugly details.
More but…
Our year-over-year job increase was the nation’s smallest increase, also 0.5%, giving us the nation’s second worst economy, just after Alaska, the only state to lose jobs in July. Thus, our performance, while slightly better, still trails everyone else (almost).
Year over year, on a not seasonally adjusted basis, New Mexico gained 4,300 jobs, or 0.5%, about the same as the June to July increase.
Shifting to “employment,” which is different from wage jobs, New Mexico lost 3,200 jobs from July 2013 to July 2014 on a not seasonally adjusted basis. Do the adjustment and the annual loss becomes “only” 500 jobs.
Our metro areas reflected the state performance, which has to figure. Three metro areas lost jobs: Albuquerque (-200); Santa Fe (-1,000); and Farmington (-500). Nationally 38 other metro areas lost jobs, year over year, while 327 gained. Las Cruces gained 900 jobs.
A review of the sectors show the bag as being decidedly mixed. Education and health services, the state’s largest “private” job sector with 125,400 people in July, added 5,000 employees over the year. The sector is only sort of private because of government involvement in health care. The federal government also sends large amount of money to “for profit” educational institutions.
Professional and business services, the state’s second largest sector and presumed home to big numbers of science and engineering people, as well as landscape architects, lost 1,500 jobs for the year including 1,200 in Albuquerque. The much smaller manufacturing sector dropped 2,000 jobs, including 900 in Albuquerque, bringing the job-loss streak to 21 months.
Mining, meaning oil and gas, continued to save the state with 1,500 more jobs, year over year, bringing the sector’s job total to 27,900.