State Gains Jobs. Mining Loses. Eddy, Lea Counties Gain

The year-end jobs report shows few signs of life in the New Mexico economy. My assessment is that our economy is weak and getting a little less weak. The claim by Gov. Susana Martinez in the January 16 State of the State address that we are strong and getting stronger is nonsense.
The state added 10,800 wage jobs in the year between December 2016 and December 2017, massive growth of 1.3%. Government lost 700 jobs over the year; the private sector added 11,500. For the month of December, the state lost 500 jobs.
The unemployment rate was six percent in December, nicely down from 6.7% a year ago. The state is now tied Washington, D.C., for the second highest rate behind Alaska. We had been third for months after D.C. and Alaska. The year-over-year unemployment rate drop was big enough to gain the designation of statistical significance from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which produces the numbers for the Department of Workforce Solutions to repackage and release. DWS released the report yesterday. The state’s job gain wasn’t big enough to be significant.
My guess is that the expansion of the national economy explains much for the state’s improvement. For example, leisure and hospitality, which is tourism to a fair extent, tied with construction to lead sector growth with 3,100 additional wage jobs. New Mexicans traveling in-state aren’t driving the growth. Instead, people from other states with jobs and higher incomes are visiting here.
Weakness shows in the 700-job year-over-year drop in mining, which mostly is oil and gas. Yet Eddy and Lea counties, center of the business, gained 3,400 jobs over the year. Even long-suffering San Juan County, home to the gas business, gained around 700 jobs.
More weakness shows in manufacturing, which continues to fade, dropping another 200 jobs for the year.
The two sectors are small, which only 44,300 jobs between them in December. But they pay well and are basic industry sectors, unlike construction which depends on businesses in other sectors to need buildings.