1.5% Job Growth Continues

During April, the New Mexico economy stuck with the 1.5% year-over-year wage job growth rate that appeared in March. April brought 12,600 new jobs over April 2014.
The curious part is that 37%, or 4,900, of the new jobs are in the education and health services sector. The Department of Workforce Solutions did not explain this situation in today’s news release. But this sector depends on others for its business, so something unusual is happening. Medicaid?
Growth came to sectors that are part of the base economy grew including Leisure and hospitality, 2,700; Professional and business services, 1,900; information, 300; manufacturing, 200; and mining, 300. The latter sector’s growth is the slowest since April 2010, the DWS release said, reflecting the slowing in oil deveopment.

Highway Money Short; Cutting Spending Not Considered

The April 30 Albuquerque Journal Up Front column was an interesting exercise for who responded and what was said and not said. The Journal's editorial page editor Dan Herrera asked civic leaders (by his definition) "to name something Albuquerque does right." No respondent represented a business. Only one mentioned anything close to earning a living. That was the small construction firms comment from the Abq Academy headmaster who gets lots of tuition money from private sector people and Labs types doing science. Science wasn’t mentioned. The first item listed was the Sandia Mountains, that by Cathy Winograd.

So we are aesthetic without worries about economics.

May 1 saw the Journal run a long story by Olivier Uyttebrouck looking at paying for New Mexico's highways. The story mentioned the right things, so far as it went. It said the amount of money is flat, a big piece is used to repay borrowing and one of the pressures comes from more efficient autos using less gas.

Toll roads, which might be a source of money, were not mentioned. More important was the continued (continued by everyone who seems to consider the highway finance issue) ignoring of considering how we spend our money and can we spend less. Not to belabor the obvious—not much—but any organization that lacks income need to consider spending less.