Statistical Shuffle Improves Job Picture

Everything that was said about job performance and non-performance in New Mexico was wrong. Or at least all that stuff about months and months of job losses is out of date now. That’s because the federal Bureau of Labors Statistics and New Mexico’s Department of Workforce Solutions changes the rules once each year.
DWS in its March 17 release “explained” the changes this way. “Each year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics realigns the sample-based estimates of the CES survey to incorporate universe counts of employment—a process known as benchmarking.”
As an example of the changes, readers may remember the year over year changes in the finance sector of well over 1,000 jobs. When this “growth” was reported each month, the report here came with skeptical note. The problem, as I see it, is that the sector is too small to support such growth without something radical happening such as a new and large employer. For sure, banks, the largest employer in finance, aren’t adding people except to do Dodd-Frank required compliance.
Guess what, guys, with the bench newly marked, as it were, the finance sector showed a gain of 300 jobs, or less than one percent, between January 2014 and January 2015.
The new numbers show professional and business services, considered a key proxy for national laboratory activity, showed 1,700 new jobs, year over year. Education and health services led the sector pack with 4,700 new jobs, or 3.7%, which was about 39% an (unlikely to me) of the year’s total job gain of 10,200 jobs.
Government dropped 1,200 jobs, 500 from the feds and 600 from local government. State government, buoyed by 1,100 new education jobs (in universities), lost just 100.