Economic Development Department releases summaries

New Mexico’s Economic Development Department released the quarterly economic summaries for each of the states counties this month. These summaries show data from the first quarter of the new fiscal year compared to fiscal year 2020.

Each of the summaries leads with the disclaimers that the three months making up fiscal year 2021’s first quarter were “the worst three months of the state’s economic impact from COVID-19,” when comparing data from the same period one year ago.

The EDD added that when the federal bonus for unemployment benefits expired it greatly reduced consumer spending power and aided in the decline in gross receipts for the first quarter of fiscal year 2021.

These summaries use matched taxable gross receipts (MTGR) to analyze economic activity as the EDD says it is the best tax data available to do so by matching tax payments with reported receipts for each taxpayer by industry.

Only 14 of the states 33 counties experienced a year-over-year increase, Including Roosevelt County.

From the last quarter of fiscal year 2020 to the end of the first quarter of fiscal year 2021 Roosevelt County’s MTGR increased by $3.7 million, or approximately 2%.

During the last eight quarters of its fiscal years, Roosevelt’s MTGR has steadily increased due to its work with utility and construction industries. For the first quarter of the new fiscal year Roosevelt reported $241 million in quarterly collection, the largest quarterly collection it has seen in last 21 quarters.

When comparing the first quarter of the 2020 fiscal year to that of 2021, Roosevelt has a year-over-year increase for MTGR of $97 million.

Construction and utilities account for 102% of the growth, which compensates for losses in industries like agriculture, oil and gas, and manufacturing. Without the increase in construction and utilities the EDD estimates that Roosevelt County would have seen $2 million in losses.

“It would be hard to say exactly since the figures don’t name companies, just sectors, but it’s very, very likely this was caused by the $900 million investment that Xcel Energy made in constructing the Sagamore Wind Project,” Karl Terry, Executive Director of Roosevelt County Chamber of Commerce said. “We quite simply have never had another project this big in Roosevelt County. We were just fortunate to have this project approved and ready to really take off when the pandemic hit.”

Gross receipts tax revenue collection increase 2% between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021, and nearly $1.5 million between the first quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021.

Curry County was one of the 19 counties who saw a decline in year-over-year MTGR. Curry’s MTGR declined by 4%, which is approximately $9.8 million from the fourth quarter or fiscal year 2020 to the first quarter of fiscal year 2021. The MTGR reported for this first quarter is almost equal to that of fiscal year 2018’s third quarter.

From the first quarter of fiscal year 2020 to the end of the first quarter of 2021 Curry saw a decrease of $23 million in MTGR. The EDD said that the loss is mostly attributed to the construction and information industries, whose combined loss equaled $36 million but was slightly offset by increases in healthcare and social assistance, retail trade, and utilities industries.

In year-over-year growth, Curry County’s retail trade had the strongest growth with a 9% increase, about $6 million, from the first quarter of fiscal year 2020 to the first quarter of fiscal year 2021.

Curry’s gross receipts tax revenue also declined in the most recent quarter by 3% or approximately $55,000 from the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2020. Compared to the first quarter of 2020 the gross receipts tax revenue was down 23%.

Both Curry and Roosevelt weekly initial claims for unemployment insurance spiked between the end of March and mid-April. At its peak Curry County had over 350 new unemployment insurance claims in one week, and Roosevelt had over 120. This data excluded pandemic unemployment assistance and pandemic emergency unemployment assistance

For ongoing unemployment insurance claims Roosevelt County’s highest weekly claims came in mid-June with nearly 700 claimants. Since then numbers have remained relatively consistent with 500 and 700 claimants weekly.

Curry’s highest weekly claims for ongoing unemployment insurance came in early Oct. with over 2,000 claimants. Since mid-June Curry’s claimants have remained around 2,000, but dipped to a little over 1,500 at the beginning of November.

For both counties, initial unemployment claims spiked in the third quarter of fiscal year 2020, increased in the fourth quarter of 2020, and decreased slightly in the first quarter of fiscal year 2021.

“This unprecedented uptick in initial unemployment claims is tied directly to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent furloughs and layoffs by affected businesses. As we continue into early and mid-2021, it is likely the number of initial unemployment claims will vary based on the effects of the pandemic but gradually wane,” the EDD reported, noting that significant increase in initial unemployment claims can be indicative of an economic downturn.