Friday, January 25, 2019

Albuquerque Adds 10,300 jobs; Revisions Coming

The December issue of the New Mexico’s Department of Workforce Solutions Labor Market Review newsletter slipped into the email inbox late this afternoon. The Review bring detail to the happy numbers released last week. Those numbers—2.4%, 19,900 person, seasonally adjusted employment growth for the year between December 2017 and December 2018—will disappear in early March with the release of annually revised figures in early March.
For now, however, Albuquerque can revel in year-over-year wage employment being up 10,300 wages, or 2.6%. The other three metro areas can gather some warm fuzzies with the knowledge, however short term, of a few new age jobs each during 2018.
For Las Cruces it was 300 jobs, or 0.4%. Santa Fe: 400 jobs, 0.6%. Farmington: 300 jobs, 0.6%.
Professional and business services led Albuquerque’s growth with 3,900 jobs during 2018, a 6.4% increase. Leisure and hospitality followed with 1,900 jobs, a 4.5% increase.
Government added 2,400 jobs over the year, a 2.9% increase that included 1,700 State government jobs. State government showed no change in employment during December.
Construction continued to grow, adding 1,000 jobs, or 4.3%. Education and health services generated 700 new jobs. Manufacturing added 200.

Friday, January 18, 2019

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%.

Sunday, January 13, 2019

Abq Homes Sales Up for 2018, Down for December

At the end of November, metro Albuquerque sales of single family detached homes were cruising along, 545 units, or 5%, ahead of the comparable 11 months in 2017. Then came December. Sales dropped 66 units from December 2017 to 845 units for the months. December sales were down 51 units from November as the market heads for the seasonal low in January or February. Sales finished the year 487 units ahead of 2017, a 4.1% gain.
Closed sales were 735 in January 2018.
June was the only other month during 2018 when sales dropped from the comparable 2017 month.
Call it cold weather or rising interest rates.
Still, people are thinking about buying a new home. For December there were 796 sales pending, a 22.1% jump from December 2017. The percentage increase was even better than November when pending sales were 17.1% up from November 2017. Pending sales were 912 units in November.
The median price was $209,950 for homes sold during December, an 8.3% hike from December 2017 and the second highest monthly median for the year behind only the $211,670 seen in June. The average price was $246,348 for the December sales, up 6.9% from a year earlier, but just fourth highest average for 2018.
December’s homes sold in an average of 53 days, one day faster than during December 2017