State Job Growth Is 2.2% in September

uring September unemployment rates were stable in 39 states, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Non-farm wage jobs were “essentially unchanged” in 45 states. New Mexico was one of the states with “statistically significant” changes in seasonally adjusted wage job totals for the year from September 2018 to September 2019, the BLS said. Our 18,800 net new jobs were a 2.2% gain. Nice!
The state Department of Workforce Solutions also release job totals today.
New Mexico’s 4.9% unemployment rate in September ties Arizona for fourth place nationally. Alaska leads with Mississippi and the District of Columbia tied for second at 5.4% unemployed. The state's unemployment rate, seasonally adjusted, hasn’t changed in three months and was 4.9% a year ago.
Construction and mining were the state’s sector performance leaders for the September to September year. Construction saw 10% growth with 4,700 new jobs. Mining, which is pretty much oil and gas, added 2,000 jobs for an 8.1% increase. Leisure and hospitality (the proxy for tourism) followed with 7,200 new jobs and 7.3% growth.
The other gainers were professional and business services, up 2,400 jobs and 2.2%, and health care and social assistance, up 2,200 and 1.8%.
Government grew over the year, led by local government (excluding education), up 2,200 jobs and 4.4%. State government (excluding education) added 1,000 jobs for 3.2% growth as the administration continued to fill those authorized but vacant positions. The feds grew by 1,000 jobs and 3.5%.
Eddy and Lea counties continued their oil-driven jobs with increases, respectively of 3,300 jobs (to 33,895) and 2,000 jobs to 32,153.

Eddy, Lea Boom. Metros Areas Don't

The one thing sure for me about New Mexico’s 2019 wage job growth is that it isn’t happening in the four metro areas. That should be intuitively obvious given that the oil-boom counties are in the southeast corner, a long way from the nearest metro, Las Cruces. Still the difference is striking.
The state added 15,500 wage jobs between August 2018 and August 2019. The Department of Workforce Solutions and the Bureau of Labor Statistics released that number a week ago. The details came in the DWS Labor Market Review newsletter, released Friday September 27.
By my count the four metros—Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Santa Fe and Farmington—added 3,000 jobs. That’s about 20% of the new jobs to the four areas with well over half the population. The metro breakout is: Albuquerque is up 2,400 jobs, August to August. Las Cruces has added 500, with 400 more in Farmington and 300 fewer in Santa Fe.
By heavy contrast Eddy and Lea counties added 5,318 jobs with 3,216 jobs in Eddy and 2102 in Lea. The two counties scored 34% of the August to August job growth.
This growth shows in the average private sector weekly wage by county. Los Alamos leads $1,572. Eddy has $1,214 with $1,115 in Lea. With $901, Bernalillo is in fourth place. Catron county is 33rd with $391. Though Los Alamos National Laboratory is technically private sector, those LANL wages come from the feds.
In metro Albuquerque, leisure and hospitality lead sector growth by percent (+1,800, 4%). Education and health services added 2,100 jobs (+3.3%) Professional and business services added 2,100 jobs (+3.4%)
In last week’s entry I claimed metro Albuquerque was up 11,000 jobs for the year. Wrong. My apologies.

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%.

Job Growth Gains Significance

The New Mexico rate of unemployment continues down, though the state retains its grip on the nation’s third highest rate at 5.1% unemployed. The state’s drop in unemployment rate hit the “statistically significant” mark for both the one month change from 5.4% in April to 5.1% in May and year-over-year with the change from 6.2% in May 2017. The one-month performance of -0.3 percentage points was the nation’s best.
The Department of Workforce Solutions released the May job report yesterday.
Our year over year seasonally adjusted employment change, a 1.6% increase, was also statistically significant. There were 828,500 people employed in the state in May 2017 and 841,700 in May 2018, a 13,200 increase. The labor force grew by 10,000. Employment grew by 20,000 and unemployment dropped 9,000.
Switching to a not seasonally adjusted basis, Eddy and Lea counties, now dealing with a drilling boom, accounted for a quarter of the year-over-year job growth. Eddy County employment increased by 1,914. Lea employment grew 1,452.
Again not seasonally adjusted basis, over the year, the labor fore grew by 20,000.
The improvement covered most of the major supersectors. (These used to called “sectors.”)
The increases (not seasonally adjusted) were in mining, 300; construction, 2,900 (6.4%); non-durable manufacturing, 700; transportation and warehousing, 1,700; financial, 2,000; professional and business services, 3,000 (3.7%); and leisure and hospitality, 3,400 (3.5%, summer hiring?).
Health care and social assistance and information, both down 700, were the only sectors of size to lose more than a few jobs.
State government education dropped 900 jobs (university summer school?). Local government education dropped 400 (public schools out for the summer?).

NM Economy Improving; Long Way To Go

The “overall message” from Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City regional economist Alison Felix on April 18 was, “Things are improving. There is a long way to go.”
Felix spoke in Albuquerque at the Fed’s Albuquerque Economic Forum.
Today Felix got a supporting new number from the Department of Workforce Solutions and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. New Mexico’s unemployment dropped another two tenths of a point in March to 5.6%, down from 5.8% in February and 6.3% in March 2017. Maine, Ohio and Wyoming were the other states with over-the-month unemployment rate decreases. In Maine, hardly anyone is unemployed; the rate is 2.7%.
But on the other hand, that favorite economist’s expression, the state’s unemployment remained second highest in the nation, a point DWS ignored. The good news starts from a low (or high) base.
Metro Albuquerque, with 46% of employment in the state has 4.7% unemployment.
The state added 8,900 wage jobs (seasonally unadjusted) from March 2017 to March 2018 for 1.1% growth. The growth appears erratic. There were 11,000 new year-over-year jobs in February, 7,000 in January and 10,800 in December.
Construction remains the sector growth leader with 3,000 new jobs in the March year, a 4.7% increase. Manufacturing, with 1,200 new jobs, tied construction for the percentage increase lead with 4.7% growth. That manufacturing is growing at all suggests improvement in the New Mexico economy. In part, Felix said, the manufacturing slump has been tied to energy, which supports a lot of manufacturing.
Employment growth has reached Lea and Eddy counties, the oil production heartland. (Note: “employment” is different from “jobs,” developed by different methods. The categories are closely related, of course.)
Lea County employment grew by 1,310 or 5.1%, year over year. Eddy employment grew 2,026. The county job growth seems curious in light of zero mining sector job growth. The two counties do have other things happening such as Carlsbad Caverns and Urenco’s National (uranium) Enrichment Facility near Eunice.
On yet another hand for Lea and Eddy, the drilling boom in the Permian Basin that includes Lea and Eddy is running into some of the bottlenecks characterizing booms, starting a labor shortage. Pipeline capacity is beginning to be problem, the Wall Street Journal reported April 19. Pipelines for natural gas, producing along with oil, are having some of the same dilemmas. “Some producers face the prospect of shutting wells,” the Journal said.
Professional and business services was the number two job producing sector with additional of 2,600. Leisure and hospitality added 1,900. Financial activities grew by 1,200. Transportation, warehousing and utilities added 1,000.
Retail trade, down 1,100, led the losers followed by information and state government education, both down 1,000, and health care, which lost 700.

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.

NM Adds 11,700 Education/Health Jobs. Maybe

If this keeps up, the only people working in New Mexico will be part of the education and health services sector. That’s because the EHS sector added 11,700 jobs between July 2016 and July 2017, the Department of Workforce Solutions reported this afternoon with a straight face. That’s 2,100 more than the seasonally unadjusted wage job growth of 9,600 jobs for the entire state. And that means all the other job sectors sector together lost those 2,100 jobs.
Or not. The DWS release said, “Based on historical seasonal patterns, which have previously shown employment decreases in June and July, these gains are expected to be revised down later.” No DWS estimates appeared for the presumably coming revisions.
The state’s unemployment rate bumped to a seasonally adjusted 6.4%, for third place nationally behind Alaska (6.7%) and Nevada (6.5%). Our unemployment rate increase from 6.2% in June to 6.4% was considered “statistically significant” by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, federal source of the numbers processed by DWS. The labor force grew by 8,500 (encroaching optimism?) to 926,421. The number of wage jobs, seasonally adjusted, grew 7,600 to 830,500.
The mining/logging sector lost 6,600 jobs, year over year. In Lea County, the labor force has dropped 1,200 over the year to 28,291, seasonally unadjusted; employment has dropped 2,000, pushing the unemployment rate to 9.9%.
Manufacturing continued to erode, down another 1,600 jobs to 26,400.
A piece of good news is the 1,900-job increase in professional and business services, pushing the sector total to 102,500. Local government, that engine of growth, added 3,200 jobs, year over year.

Seasonally Adjust the Job Numbers and Nice Increase Drops 45%

No real new news came from the June jobs release this afternoon from the Department Workforce Solutions. The year over year (June 2015 to June 2016) wage job increase figure did improve to 14,000, almost five times the 2,900 new jobs reported from May 2015 to May 2016. So I guess that’s news. The performance is not considered statistically significant by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which also released figures today.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, the BLS said, the year over year increase as 7,700, or 0.93%. Seasonally adjusted, the state has added 2,000 jobs since April. Not much.
At 6.2%, the state’s June unemployment rate remains statistically significantly higher than the national rate of 4.9%.
The same-old-same-old is that 70% of the increase, or 9,800 jobs, came from the education and health services sector, which mostly means Medicaid.
Another 5,300 jobs came from leisure and hospitality, which is mostly tourism and is having a good year, according to the Tourism Department. The sector’s 5.9% increase was the largest, DWS said, since sector sectors began in 1990.
Mining (mostly oil and gas production) and logging added 400 jobs during May. The year over year loss was 5,900 jobs, the smallest since November 2015. This report is consistent with national reports that oil production firms are adding a few jobs.
Between May and June unemployment grew another 332 people, a 13.2% jump, and at 9.7% ranked third highest in the state. The Farmington unemployment rate is 9.1%.
Professional and business services, home to landscape architects and technical consultants, added 3,900 jobs over the year, a nice 3.8% increase. The PBS sector reclaimed the 100,000-job level in April.