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Journal North: Home | Sports | Opinion | Obits | Entertainment
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Report Shows New Mexicans Faring OK in Economy
By Karen Peterson
Of the Journal
The annual State of the Rockies report card has arrived from Colorado College. Researched and written by students and faculty from all over the West, it's designed to provide "a thoughtful, objective voice on regional issues," and it's the focus of an annual symposium at the college, held earlier this month.
This year's report card shows that, as usual, New Mexico is the poorest of the eight states in the "intermountain West" — 18 percent of New Mexicans and 14 percent of families are classified as living in poverty. Our median family income is the lowest in the eight, too — and a full 35 percent below Colorado, the highest. And our incomes rose by less than most other Western states — by only 3 percent between 2000 and 2007, compared with a 7 percent increase across the Rocky Mountain region.
Ordinarily, these might be discouraging numbers. But this year, well into the global economic downturn, there may be a silver lining to some of the last-place rankings.
For a stunning graphic depiction of just what the downturn has meant nationally, check out slate.com's interactive map of job losses across the U.S., measured over the 26-month period from January 2007 to February 2009 (www.slate.com/id/2216238/). Job gains are represented by blue and losses red circles, with the brighter colors and larger dots meaning more loss. Huge swathes of the country — Detroit and Chicago, the southern Atlantic seaboard, parts of California — are red hemorrhages by late 2008. In New Mexico, the circles are small and pale. We've lost jobs, but not so many as other areas of the country — 573 in Los Alamos compared to a year ago; 1,744 in Santa Fe and about 6,000 in Bernalillo.
According to the State of the Rockies Report Card, employment growth — and despite the downturn there has been some — has been more robust in New Mexico than in the nation as a whole — up 16 percent for all occupations as compared with 10 percent nationally. Here again, unfortunately, we compare unfavorably with the rest of the Rockies, which has seen a 21 percent increase in employment overall.
But maybe our less-than-stellar growth — in population, income, jobs — has kept the downturn from being correspondingly severe. It costs less to live in New Mexico than elsewhere in the region, according to the report card. Home values in New Mexico are the lower than in the other seven mountain states (Montana south to Arizona, plus Colorado and Nevada), and home prices haven't risen here as quickly as they have elsewhere, perhaps sparing us the worst effects of the collapse of the real estate bubble.
The median value of homes in Las Vegas, Nev., for example, soared by more than 80 percent between 2000 and 2007; in Arizona, the increase was more than 60 percent. Here, the median home value over the same period increased by only 19 percent statewide. Rents have increased here by only 5 percent, a big contrast with Nevada, where they've gone up 16 percent, or Wyoming, where they've gone up 21 percent.
Other glimmers of encouragement: According to the report card, we're among the better-educated of the eight mountain states. Twenty-five percent of adults have a bachelor's degree here, a smaller percentage than in several of the other states, but 10 percent of New Mexicans have graduate or professional degrees, the second highest rate behind Colorado and on a par with national average.
This year's report card devotes a whole chapter to patterns of urban development across the region, starting with a satellite picture of "night sky brightness" across the country, and correlating the relatively sparse islands of light in the intermountain West to detailed census information by tract. It's an in-depth follow-up on a recent Brookings Institution study identifying six "megapolitan" regions in the Rockies, including the Albuquerque-Santa Fe region. (The report card calls this "The Enchanted Corridor.")
Noting that the population of the mountain region as a whole has grown 9 percent in the first half of first decade of the 21st century, 4.5 times the national rate, the report card projects population to increase by 200 percent in the Rockies between 2000 and 2060. (The population of the country as a whole is expected to double over the same period.) Mercifully, New Mexico's population is projected to increase by "only" about 150 percent.
The Enchanted Corridor is projected to grow more slowly than most of the other six mountain megapolises through 2060 — a mere 1.3 percent annually, compared with 3.7 percent for Phoenix-Tucson conglomeration and 3.6 percent for the Snake River Valley, an up-and-coming "megapolis" that includes Boise. In this regard, we compare with the Front Range megapolis stretching around Denver, also projected to grown at a rate of only 1.3 percent.
Water is going to be a problem as the region grows, the report card laconically notes, and so is transportation. The intermountain West lacks an adequate rail system and can't afford to develop one without federal help. Think Rail Runner.
But federal aid for rail transportation of the type we might need isn't likely to be forthcoming in the short term; a recent Economist noted that there are no federally designated high speed rail corridors between San Antonio, Texas and San Diego, or between Minneapolis/St. Paul and Seattle. This blank space on the high-speed rail map corresponds eerily to that "dark" section of the country, from roughly the Mississippi River to California in satellite photos of "night sky brightness." The isolated light clusters, geographically recognizable as Denver, Albuquerque-Santa Fe, Phoenix-Tucson and Las Vegas, are not served by fast rail at all, and the Colorado College report card notes that Las Vegas even has a significant problem with interstate highway connections to the rest of the country.
Other tidbits in this year's report card: an assessment of the success at federal political representation of the eight mountain states, rendered obsolete for New Mexico before it was published since our entire congressional delegation, with the exception of Sen. Jeff Bingaman, has been replaced by now very junior members, all of them Democrats.
A final note: The Valles Caldera National Preserve comes in for special mention in the report card's chapter on wildlife management, and these reached the same conclusion as many New Mexicans already have: The Valles Caldera does and will continue to get the lion's share of its revenue from recreation, not cattle ranching, and any efforts to increase revenues from grazing, for example by upping the head of livestock allowed on the preserve, are in direct conflict with the preferences of recreational users.
Says the report card: "It is noteworthy that the (Valles Caldera) trust recoups nearly $6,000 for every elk hunted on the preserve and almost $40 per day for every fisherman, while the revenue from a steer is only $30 a year — yet livestock grazing remains the controversial focus and emphasis of the Preserve's Board of Trustees."
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