August Job Report: Govt, Construction, Services, Mining Lose Big

Real job growth disappeared in New Mexico during August, as compared to August 2014. What that means is that the education and health services sector produced 5,500 new wage jobs during the year. Since the sector is driven by Medicaid growth, I don’t consider the jobs real, in the sense of producing wealth for New Mexicans and building the state.
The Department of Workforce Solutions and the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the August job summary this afternoon.
The state generated 3,000 new jobs, year-over-year. All the other sectors lost 2,500 jobs. Education and health services made up the difference. Leisure and hospitality (tourism) produced 3,300 new jobs. So the rest of the state, minus those two, lost 5,800 jobs. That’s a lot.
Government, down 2,200, led the losers, followed by “other services,” minus 1,500. Construction lost 2,000 jobs. The oil slump caught up with New Mexico, producing the loss of 1,000 jobs in mining, which includes oil and gas.
The only other good news was 1,300 jobs, year-over-year, in professional and business services.
The unemployment rate nudged up to 6.7% from 6.5% in July and 6.4% in July 2014. New Mexico and Nebraska were the only two states with statistically significant unemployment rate increases.