I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
When the economy goes south, Albuquerque looks sunny in more ways than the weather, according to a Business Week assessment that aims to “identify the best places to live during a recession.”
“Some cities will be safer in a recession,” reads the headline of the article posted this week by BusinessWeek.com, with the subhead adding: “Cities with a strong presence in health care, education, law, energy and the government will feel the impact of a downturn less.”
The article says some places will suffer more, including:
…states such as California, Florida, and Nevada that are buried under a growing mass of foreclosures, cities like New York and Chicago that have large numbers of financial sector jobs, and manufacturing towns that are already suffering from weak sales of cars and other durable goods.
To do its research, BusinessWeek.com looked to places less likely to suffer and explained its methodology:
Other local economies, those dominated by stable industries, could be relatively well-cushioned. BusinessWeek.com worked with data from PolicyMap.com, a demographics and data site run by Philadelphia’s Reinvestment Fund, to identify the best places to live during a recession. We looked at places where large portions of the population worked in anticyclical industries such as government, health care, education, agriculture, and legal services.
Albuquerque is not listed specifically in the story, but is profiled in an attached photo group of cities that are less likely to suffer. Part of its reason for being listed is because of major employers in the area, including the University of New Mexico, the Kirtland Air Force Base, and Intel.
New Mexico is named, but only in this way:
We had hoped to include energy in our analysis despite the recent decline in oil prices, because gasoline and natural gas prices are still relatively high, and energy-producing states such as Alaska, Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wyoming are benefiting. We weren’t able to collect town-level data on energy jobs…
