Archive for December, 2009

New Mexico ranked second nationally with a 40% decline in state revenues from the third quarter of 2008 to the third quarter of 2009. The figures, from the Census Bureau, are for total state tax collections. The report was in the Wall Street Journal today. New Mexico collected $1,184 million in the third quarter of 2008 and $710 million a year later. 

Only Alaska, with a 64.% drop in revenue, beat New Mexico’s percentage drop. Oklahoma was third with a 25.6% drop.

Three states showed increased revenue for the period: Rhode Island (+1.7%); New Hampshire (+1.4%); and Nevada (0.6%).

New Mexico’s unemployment rate hung in at 7.8% for November, unchanged from October, the Department of Workforce Services reported today.

Maybe it is getting a little better. The number of new claims for unemployment compensation dropped two consecutive weeks in November, as compared to a year earlier, but then reverted to normal, increasing the three weeks through December 18. However, for two of those three weeks, new claims increased, respectively, by six and 35. The other week, the week ending December 5, claims grew 291 over the week a year earlier.

The “green shoot” from the DWS is that employment, not nonagricultural wage and salary employment, just “employment,” which comes from an employer survey, has reported three consecutive months of seasonally adjusted increases in the total number of jobs.

Statewide, nonagricultural wage and salary employment dropped by 25,400 from November 2008 through November 2009, a 3% decline. Wage employment did increase from October to November in three of the state’s four metro areas. Farmington, the exception, dropped 200 wage jobs in November bringing the one-year loss to 3,100. Albuquerque is down 13,900 wage jobs for the year. Santa Fe has lost 4,100 with 1,600 gone in Las Cruces.

In Santa Fe local government lost 100 jobs from November 2008 through November 2009. State and federal employment in Santa Fe did not change.

A second green shoot is that now four industrial categories are reporting year-over-year job increases. Government and education/health care have grown all along. Now Other Services and Information have added jobs, the latter “presumably,” DWS says, from film production. The new information jobs appear to be outside the metro areas. Three metros show fewer information jobs and the category is not separately reported for Farmington.

With the addition during November of Catron County, New Mexico now has four counties with more than 10% unemployment. The others are Luna, Mora and Grant. Taos County is in fifth place with a 9.5% unemployment rate.

New Mexico’s population crossed the two million mark in 2009 for an estimated population of 2,009,671 as of July 1, 2009. The Bureau of the Census released the new population estimates today.

During the 2008-2009 year, the state’s population grew 22,908 or 1.16 percent. Population growth has slowed considerably since 2005 and 2006. For that one year, the increase was 1.36 percent, or 26,070.

Almost two thirds (63 percent) of our one-year population growth came from natural increase, the term for the margin of births over deaths. The rest come from net migration, the number of people moving to the state versus the number leaving. The 3,366 people moving to or from other states accounted for 41 percent of the migrants with the rest moving across international borders.

Between the census in 2000 and 2009, New Mexico’s population by 190,630 people with 68 percent (129,591) from natural increase and 32 percent from migration. Of the migrants, a third came from inside the United States. It would seem that New Mexico has become a less attractive destination for people who are moving, in particular people moving from other states.

New Mexico’s population in 2009 is the nation’s 36^th largest, a rank unchanged from 2000. Our nine-year population increase ranks 30th by number and 17^th by percentage.

Some good glimmers are appearing for the Albuquerque economy. But first here is the ugly news about the state.

The latest consensus estimates for state government, unveiled December 3, show forecast economic performance as far more weak than was anticipated in October, a mere two months earlier. For the current budget year that ends June 30, 2010, wage jobs are expected to drop 3.5%. Personal income will drop a half a percent. Wages and salaries will be down 3.5%.

For metro Albuquerque, we start with real estate. Around metro Albuquerque, there were 646 single family detached homes sold were a 57% jump from a year earlier the best November performance since 2006. Townhouse and condominium sales rose 59% from November 2008. Sales did drop from October, but that is the seasonal cycle.

Sales of homes priced between $100,000 and $159,000 accounted for 235 sales or 39% of the November total. The 100 homes priced between $200,000 and $249,000 sold during November were 17% of total sales for the month.

The further good news here is that when people buy houses, they tend to buy furniture and appliances.

Bigger picture good news comes from a new Brookings Institution publication, “Mountain Monitor.” The report tracks economic performance for the ten largest metro areas in the mountain region. With no growth from the recession’s start through the end of the third quarter, Albuquerque led the ten and ranked sixth nationally.

Brookings’ measure is gross metropolitan product (GMP), the market value of all final goods and services produced within a metropolitan area in a given period of time. Albuquerque got back to zero growth for the longer period by showing 1.1% GMP growth from the second to the third quarter of 2009.

For a summary of the 21-page report, see www.brookings.edu/reports/2009/1215_mountain_monitor.aspx.

Anne Hillerman and Don Strel don’t do your ordinary book signing event, just talking a bit and then signing. To present “Tony Hillerman’s Landscape,” they bring what Collected Works Bookstore and Coffeehouse co-owner Dorothy Massey called an “act.”

“Tony Hillerman’s Landscape” is an exploration of the Navajo Country and more that was the setting for Hillerman’s 18 mystery novels featuring Navajo detectives Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn.

Last night to Collected Works in cold and crisp downtown Santa Fe, the wife and husband team brought the act, a tag-team approach that also drafted their son Brandon. Anne was the writer and Strell the photographer. Anne, “senior daughter” of Tony Hillerman presented the story of the three-year saga that led to “Tony Hillerman’s Landscape.” She touched on the stories’ continuing central themes such as the idea that greed is a prime cause of human misery. Brandon read excerpts from the mysteries. At 26, he is the spittin’ image of the young Tony, as they might say in Tony’s native Oklahoma. All the while, Strell clicked through the photos from the book. Strell is as talented a photographer as there is in New Mexico.

Tony Hillman was in on the beginning of the project and wrote the introduction. He died October 26, 2008.

An extraordinarily decent man, Tony Hillerman was one of my mentors at the University of New Mexico’s journalism department. – Harold Morgan

For the second week new unemployment compensation claims in New Mexico dropped from the same week a year earlier. Two data points do not a trend make, but it’s nice news. The numbers for unemployment compensation claims are about the closest thing available to real time tracking of the state economy.

The week in question was the week ending November 21. There were 2,077 new claims, down 145 from a year previous. For the week of November 14, new claims were down 14.

A year ago, new claims were up significantly over 2007. For the same two weeks of 2007, claims dropped from 2006.

From 2008 to 2009, metro Albuquerque dropped 11 places in the Milken Institute/Greenstreet Real Estate Partners Best-Performing Cities Index. The index, Milken’s website (http://bestcities.milkeninstitute.org) says, “ranks U.S. metropolitan areas by how well they are creating and sustaining jobs and economic growth.” 

Albuquerque went from 31^st in 2008 to 42^nd in 2009.

Among the 200 large metro areas, Albuquerque ranked 56 for five-year job growth, 78 for one-year job growth, 73 for five year growth in wages and salaries, 113 for one year wage and salary growth, 89 in job “growth” (with a 2.5% drop in jobs from March 2008 to March 2009, and 98 in five year relative high tech GDP growth. The latter factor measures high tech sector output growth relative to the United States average of 100 between 2003 and 2008.

With Albuquerque’s rank on these factors all being below that 31^st place overall rank, something had to save the Albuquerque bacon. That something was high technology, starting with placing 28 in one year (2007 to 2008) relative high tech GDP growth.

Albuquerque has a lot of high technology, relative to the other 199 metros. Albuquerque was 8^th in high tech location quotient with a 1.95 value during 2008. A metro with an LQ higher than 1.0 is said to be more concentrated than the United States, Milken says. Albuquerque is 14^th nationally with 11 high technologies with a location quotient over the national average of 1.0 during 2008.

Cities ahead of Albuquerque included Amarillo, 35th in 2009, and Oklahoma City, 26th in 2009.

On Milken’s list of 124 small metro areas, Las Cruces was ninth in 2009, up two places. Santa Fe was 35th, a 24 place drop from 2008.