The Southwest Public Policy Institute closely monitors the six-month trend in job growth/decline in the American Southwest’s eight states. This week’s numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics were encouraging.
Every state in our region except California experienced employment expansions between August and January. (Yes, even New Mexico was in positive territory.)
Arizona achieved the best average monthly growth, followed by Utah and — seriously! — New Mexico. (The Land of Enchantment’s portion of the Permian Basin is booming. The Financial Times visited the southeast corner of the state in January, and found that “joblessness is plunging, wages are soaring and new tax receipts are flowing to state coffers.”)
The Silver State remains something of an enigma. It’s notched three months of expansion in a row, and led the nation in job growth between January 2022 and January 2023, but that’s not doing much to alleviate Nevada’s unemployment rate, currently the worst in the nation.
U.S. joblessness was 3.4 percent in January, putting Utah (as always) in superstar territory, at 2.4 percent. Colorado and Oklahoma beat the national mark as well. In the region, California was the non-Nevada laggard, at 4.2 percent.
February numbers will be released one week from today, so we’ll soon have fresher data to examine. With the financial world in a whirlwind, the international situation more than a little dicey, and most state legislatures still in session, these are “interesting times.” Policymakers, we’re watching.
