NM Adds 20,000 Jobs. Lea Now 3rd in Oil Production

New Mexico’s 2.4%, 19,900 person, seasonally adjusted employment growth for the year between December 2017 and December 2018 placed us among the 40 states with statistically significant by the reckoning of the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. December employment was 855,700, the BLS said.
The largest year over year unemployment rate decline occurred in New Mexico (-1.3 percentage points).
Summary job statistics were released this afternoon by the BLS and by New Mexico’s Department of Workforce Solutions.
Leisure and hospitality continued to lead New Mexico’s sector growth with 8,400 new wage jobs. That’s 41% of the 20,400 seasonally unadjusted wage jobs added during the year. Professional and business services grew by 3,400 jobs with 2,600 more in construction and 1,000 in mining, an especially good showing, no doubt finally reflecting the rapid growth in oil and gas production. Health care and social services was up 1,900 jobs.
The Lea County labor force expand by 3,200 during the year to 30,900 with employment up 3,400. Eddy County shows the same sort of growth.
Lea County is the nation’s number three oil producing county, the Hobbs News Sun reported recently. Eddy County is seventh,
Arizona’s unemployment rate was 4.8% in December, a tenth of a point ahead of New Mexico’s 4.7%. Arizona’s 2018 unemployment outlook from the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona forecast 4.6% unemployment with 3.8% in 2019 as “Arizona hits the accelerator,” EBRC’s economic outlook said last month.
The unemployment rate increased by 0.1 percentage point in December for Arizona and New Mexico, the BLS said. In Colorado and Oregon the rate was up 0.2 percentage point each. The Colorado increase took the unemployment rate all of 3.5%. In Utah, the unemployment rate is even less: 3.2%.