Four More Years

It's been a long road to economic recovery for New Mexico since the Great Recession bottomed out in 2008, and by the looks of things, it's still going to take a while to get back to where we once were.

Bob Richards, an economist with the state Department of Workforce Solutions, projects that the state won't recover to pre-recession employment levels until mid-2018. He came up with this projection by using the current statewide employment numbers and applying the state's recent 1.1 percent annual growth to industry across the board.

If nothing out of the ordinary happens (like, say, another economic downturn), that means New Mexico's employed workforce will return to the levels it was at in December 2007 sometime in the middle of 2018.

Here's Richards' graph outlining the projections:

The graph shows that the state contained around 855,000 employed workers in December 2007, the last time of peak employment before the recession hit. Current numbers show around 820,000 employed workers in the state, and Richards says that once we get back to 855,000, we're at a full recovery in terms of employment.

We at SFR have only one thing to add to this somewhat grim news: Four more years!

Santa Fe Reporter