Friday, January 27, 2017

Unemployment Rate Drops in Mississippi, Not in NM

Activity in New Mexico’s employment sectors churned in December but ended the month with a gain of 100 jobs. Government, mining and construction took care of losing 2,600 jobs. Private sector service sectors added 2,700 jobs to provide the 100 job gain, which, the Department of Workforce Solutions said was a “neutral percentage growth.”
Over the year, as reported last week, the state gained 2,400 jobs, bringing the wage job total to 835,400. New Mexico’s 6.6% unemployment rate was second place nationally behind Alaska. Mississippi, the nation’s unemployment leader at 6.8% in December 2015, reported 5.6% unemployed in December 2016.
For the month, leisure and hospitality led the growers with 900 new wage jobs, followed by professional and business services (+800) and education and health services (+500).
The numbers are in the DWS newsletter, Labor Market Review, which was released this afternoon. The numbers discussed here are not seasonally adjusted.
The three smaller metro areas—Las Cruces (+400), Farmington (+300) and Santa Fe (-200)—combined for a net gain of 500 jobs during 2016. The only big number among the three was 1,200 new education and health services jobs in Las Cruces, which offset the gain with 400 fewer jobs in both government and manufacturing. For Santa Fe, it was plus 100 here, minus 100 there, among the sectors.

No comments: