New Mexico’s unemployment rate fell the most of any state and Washington D.C. over the last year, according to a new federal report. While that’s good news, it doesn’t mean New Mexico is leading the nation in jobs.
Over 4.5% of New Mexico’s workforce didn’t have a job in March 2022. A year later, that number has fallen to 3.5%, according toa Bureau of Labor Statistics report released Friday.
“Which is a really big jump,” said Nathan Friedman, an economist with the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions. He said the 1.1% drop takes New Mexico from near the bottom of the list nationally to about the middle of the pack.
“We’re where the national average is, which is not amazing but it’s good,” he said.
It didn’t take New Mexico all year to get there, either. In August, the state hit what Friedman said was an all-time low of 3.4% unemployment and has been holding pretty steady.
The reason New Mexico’s rate is falling faster than others now is because it initially lagged behind as the country began recovering economically from the pandemic, according to Friedman.
“That’s not really surprising,” he said. “That seems to happen to us for most recessions. We aren’t hit quite as hard as a lot of other states, but it takes us a little bit longer to get back on our feet.”
He said that’s due to a number of factors in the state’s economy, including the outsized role of federal dollars.
The promising decline over the last year has been largely driven by private industry jobs and the production of goods, according to the state.
