By Mary Alice Murphy

Mark Lautman of Community Economics Laboratory was hired by the Legislative Council Service to facilitate job creation assessments in the seven New Mexico councils of government.

He serves as a member of the Legislative Jobs Council, which was formed in 2013. Among the members are 26 legislators representing both houses and both parties, along with some private sector members and Cabinet members.

"They asked what it would take to get the state back to full employment by 2021," Lautman said. "We are now in the third year of the process. We said it would take clarity and consensus." He said the Legislature asked that all decisions be unanimous and essential.

He introduced the two men accompanying him—Charles Lehman of the Community Economic Laboratory and former chief economist with the Labor Department. The newest member of the team is Paul Hamrick.

"We are trying to put up data on job creation at the county level," Lautman said. "We have a database that boils it down to a few data points."

He said the process would determine the major production gaps, with the first step being a set of coherence questions. The second step involves how many jobs need to be created and how. Third is what sectors the jobs should be created in and the fourth step was to determine how to cure what is missing in the way of production gaps.

"You will be deliberating as counties, but compiled as the four-county area of the Southwest New Mexico Council of Governments," Lautman said. "We don't have good data for the best economic development drivers. You will guess at things you don't know anything about."

He said in the book, Wisdom of Crowds, it was found that numbers from group processes were 93 percent accurate if there was agreement within the group. Experts achieved only 68 percent accuracy. "You can change the information when you receive new information or when conditions change."

Lautman explained that the process would determine how many economic base jobs there were in the county. "Economic base jobs are those that sell products or services outside the county or region. Today's exercise will center on those sold outside the state of New Mexico."

He explained that agricultural, mining and tourism jobs are economic base jobs, whereas local jobs, such as school teachers or medical personnel are not, because they mainly recycle money within the community or state.

Attrition of jobs and job losses would be figured into the calculations.

To a question from Alicia Edwards of The Volunteer Center about wage levels, Lautman said, although it is an important factor, it would not be dealt with during this assessment process. "Later we can decide what jobs we want to incentivize."

He noted that some economic base jobs would happen if nothing happened in the community. "Some are hostage to incentives, and we have to cure the factor of production gap." He said the state determined that 160,000 jobs were needed statewide over 10 years. With 16,000 a year until 2024, 8,000 would happen with no help, but another 8,000 a year would be needed.

"LEDA (Local Economic Development Act) provides money to companies that don't need it," Lautman said. "The trick is to get them to come here. The intent is to create 5,000 jobs using the $50 million set aside by LEDA."

Jane Janson, Silver City Small Business Development Center director, asked if economic base jobs could be grown locally.

"Sure," Lautman said. "That's in step 3 of the process. If they are billing someone from outside the state, that's an economic base job. Solopreneur home-based businesses are the fastest growing.

"After you get the assessment done, then you go to your plans that you already have," he continued.

The New Mexico Job Creation Assessment website will be found at nmdashboard.thecelab.org.

The process began with the participants from the four counties of Grant, Luna, Hidalgo and Catron determining what they expected their population is now and what the growth would be over the next 10 years and how many jobs would be needed. Among the criteria were how many are willing, able and qualified to work; and how many economic base jobs would the county lose and have to replace.

Lautman said that renewable energy jobs were not necessarily economic base jobs, because they were an import replacement.

"Based on the work we do here, we can recommend to the Legislature on what is needed to create economic base jobs," Lehman said. "It's hard to plan out farther than 10 years. I know we are way behind on broadband in New Mexico. Your first question to answer is how many people you have and how many you will have in 10 years."

Several people in the Grant County group said the population is declining in the county. County Planner Anthony Gutierrez questioned that comment. "I don't think the population is declining, because the number of vehicles is increasing, and I get questions from new residents all the time, almost daily."

The consensus of the group was a round number of 30,000 people now and the possibility of a 10 percent growth within 10 years.

The next question was the unemployment gap. "You don't create jobs for those who don't want to work," Lautman said. "How many jobs do you need to create for those who are underemployed and want to work?"

A quick Internet check showed that up to 13,000 are employable in Grant County.

After much number crunching, it was determined that 382 jobs annually would be needed for the SWNMCOG region.

The final step of the assessment was to determine on the county level how many jobs could be grown in various industry sectors. These were mostly guesses with some being more educated guesses than others.

Lautman said information to be given to the Legislature should be specific, such as how much broadband is needed, how many providers and without it how many jobs would be lost.

The Grant County group decided it should reconvene in a couple of weeks after getting more information on what was achievable in the way of job growth.