ABQJOURNAL OPINION/GUEST_COLUMNS: Lawmakers, Focus on More Job Opportunities

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Lawmakers, Focus on More Job Opportunities

By Vince Murphy
Executive Director, Creating Opportunities for New Mexicans
          If it has not been clear that we desperately need to focus on job and opportunity creation for New Mexicans, then we are indeed in trouble. Over the past year 25,000 jobs were lost. This is the worst the state has seen in modern times.
        While there are still a lot of discussion, debate and rhetoric about the state's budget shortfalls and how this needs to be addressed, not much attention has been placed on the fact that New Mexicans are out of jobs.
        The dialogue appears to be about who should suffer more, the public sector or the private sector.
        There are some who talk about taxing the rich and closing tax loopholes, while protecting public projects and agencies. There are others who promote no tax increases and a focus on publicly funded cost cuts and efficiencies.
        What some people fail to acknowledge is that the economic downturn has negatively impacted the business sector.
        New Mexico's current budget problems are creating a challenging environment for business and job creation. Our New Mexicans are out of work and instead of talking about how to fix that, we focus on trying to eliminate everything that helps create jobs.
        What New Mexico needs now are strong and efficient public and private sectors. We need to keep economic development incentives and support for small businesses.
        It is disturbing to learn month by month that New Mexico's unemployment ranking keeps getting higher and that we are currently the 28th highest in the country of states reporting declining year-over-year employment.
        There is a group that is promoting the need to penalize the private sector in order to protect our residents and prevent cuts on funding for education, heath care and public safety. Curiously enough, the largest gains in employment continue to come from educational and health services, which were up 3,300 jobs on the year. Government also posted a year-over-year gain, adding 2,500 jobs.
        While the public sector has seen job growth over the past year, the private sector has felt the economy's sting. Industry by industry has seen significant reductions in force: more than 2,000 jobs in mining; 6,600 in construction; 4,000 manufacturing jobs; 9,000 in retail; 2,800 jobs in transportation, warehousing and utilities industry; 6,700 jobs in the business sector — all over the last 12 months. Driving the point home, the Department of Workforce Solutions also reports that since July 2009, over 138,000 New Mexicans have applied for unemployment compensation assistance.
        New Mexico also needs to create stronger links between the private sector employers and education based on mutual accountability. Liz Shuler and Christine Trujillo with AFL-CIO pointed out a very important reality in their December op-ed piece on the Journal that "without immediate action to create jobs, living standards for young workers — and even their children — may be stunted permanently.
        History teaches us that deep economic troughs like the one we're in can scar young people for their entire careers as their earnings may never recover, and their children may earn even less.
        Our state averages more than 1,177 students leaving the state before attending college, and about 22 percent of New Mexico high school graduates who go to college attend college out of state. There is an urgent need for creation of more private sector opportunities for children and future generations to have a reason to want to live and raise their families to prosper here in New Mexico. I am tired of seeing our children leaving our state to seek for better opportunities.
        There is no gain, in fact, there will be great losses, if we continue to divide and define others as the problem. Several elected officials have said that all of us need to share in the pain. There is a lot of data that indicates private sector job loss over the past 18 months has been of historic proportion.
        I agree with legislators who have stated that New Mexicans already carry a heavy tax burden when compared to other Rocky Mountain states. Increasing taxes now will likely discourage future business development and job creation and cause the recession to last even longer in New Mexico.
        I ask our legislators to please focus on the business of making it easier to do business in New Mexico and encourage the creation of opportunities for New Mexicans.
        Vince Murphy is the executive director for Creating Opportunities for New Mexicans, a 501 (c)3 organization concerning pro-economic development and pro-business issues.

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