Thursday, October 30, 2014

Rural Areas Growing, Urban Areas Not

What is happening in the New Mexico economy that is positive is happening in the rural counties. The conclusion comes from the detail on the September job figures released last Friday, October 24, by the Department of Workforce Solutions. (Yes, I’m late in passing this along. Oh, well…)
Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Farmington conspired to drop 2,700 wage jobs between September 2013 and September 2014. Las Cruces added 100 jobs during the year, which really doesn’t count.
Statewide there were 6,400 more wage jobs over the year. The rural counties had to add 9,100 jobs to overcome the urban losses and get to the annual addition.
Among the sectors, statewide, education and health services has resumed its status as leading expanding area by number with 4,500 new wage jobs, year over year, for a 3.6% increase. With 128,400 jobs for September, education and health services is the state’s largest employer group with a 31,300 job, or 32%, lead over the declining professional and business services group which dropped another 1,300 jobs September to September.
Finance was the growth leader by percentage increase with 6.9% more jobs and a sector job total of 35,600. Mining and logging, pretty much meaning oil and gas, grew by 6.1% over the year to 27,300 jobs.
Retail added 1,900 jobs to total 93,100, no mystery given that all the new jobs were in rural counties. Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Las Cruces lost 600 retail jobs for the year.
Manufacturing was the leading loser sector for the year, down 2,300 jobs with 900 of the losses, or 39%, coming in Albuquerque which has 60% of the state’s manufacturing jobs.
Government lost 1,800 jobs over the year with 1,400 job losses in local government. Local government in metro Albuquerque dropped 200 jobs with no change in Santa Fe and Las Cruces. That means that the rural counties plus Farmington lost 1,200 local government jobs.

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