> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.newmexicomadness.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # They Passed Everything. New Mexico Is Still Last. - URL: https://www.newmexicomadness.com/they-passed-everything-new-mexico-still-last/ - Published: 2026-08-19T20:07:10.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-19T20:07:10.000Z - Author: Reid Rothchild - Tags: State Give them the whole list. Every bill, every fund, every credit. Read it fairly, because the record deserves that much. An apprenticeship fund. A workforce development fund. Money moved into apprenticeship assistance. Contributions to training programs. A corporate income tax rate flattened to 5.9 percent. Reduced gross receipts taxes. A revolving fund for public projects, plus water and road bonds that put people to work. Paid sick leave. Paid family and medical leave. Universal child care. A child tax credit and expanded credits for working families. Tax credits for solar, for advanced energy equipment, for physicians who stay. A new division inside the state workforce agency, created last year. That is not the record of a government that did nothing. Now look at where the state sits. Forty-ninth overall. Fiftieth in education. Fiftieth in family and community. Forty-ninth in child well-being — an improvement, arriving after five consecutive years in last place. The highest rate of adults in poverty in the country, and wages below every state that borders us. Workforce participation third from the bottom nationally for men, fourth from the bottom for women. To reach the national average, New Mexico would need roughly 116,000 more people working. Everything was passed. Nothing moved. ## Who Was Holding The Pen Michelle Lujan Grisham has been governor since January 2019\. Eight years. She signed every budget in that span, including her final session's bills this past March. The Legislature goes back much further. Democrats have held the state Senate every single year since at least 1992\. The House every year but two. Seventeen years of full Democratic control of the governorship and both chambers since 1992, against zero years of Republican control. Thirty-three years. That is not a party that inherited a mess and ran out of time. That is a party that wrote every budget, chaired every committee, and set every priority through five governors and six recessions. ## The Counties Here is the number that should end the conversation about progress. In 2013, New Mexico's poverty rate hit 21.9 percent — the worst year in the modern record, the figure that got called a crisis. Twelve counties are still at or worse than that today. When leadership cites a statewide rate of 16.4 percent as evidence of progress, understand what that number mostly is: Bernalillo County, which holds a third of the state's people. It is an Albuquerque number wearing a statewide label, and it tells you nothing about Gallup or Deming or Tucumcari. Luna County carries 26.1 percent poverty and the highest unemployment in New Mexico at 13.9 percent. That is not a county waiting for a program. That is a county nobody built anything in. ## The Reason You can pass an apprenticeship fund and still fail, and here is how. Lawmakers appropriated money for reemployment services and case management — the direct work of taking an unemployed person and walking them into a job. The state workforce agency set its own target: 25,000 people served. It reached 12,600. Not because the money ran out. The appropriation was new that year. Not because the goal was imposed from outside. The agency picked the number itself. Twelve thousand four hundred people the state intended to help, and did not. Two years later, the Legislature's own analysts checked again. Service volume was still below where it had been before the pandemic. And they included an instruction that should have ended careers: the agency should begin tracking whether participation in its programs led people into the workforce. Begin. The office responsible for connecting New Mexicans to jobs was not measuring whether New Mexicans got jobs. Not badly. Not imperfectly. Not at all. That is the gap between passing something and running it. A bill can be signed in March and celebrated the same afternoon. Whether anyone was hired requires somebody to check twelve months later, and nobody was checking. ## The Ledger Nobody serious argues this is fully fixable. Rural geography is real. Distance is real. A thin labor market in Quay County is not something a governor repeals by signature. But that was never the question. The question is what accountability means when every available input has been supplied and every measured outcome sits at the bottom. So here is the ledger. New Mexico has 33 counties. Thirty of them have poverty rates above the national average. Twenty-five are worse than the state's own average. And twelve — McKinley at 35.7 percent, Socorro at 29, Cibola at 27.6, Luna at 26.1, Quay at 25.4, Sierra at 24.9, San Juan at 23.2, Guadalupe at 23, San Miguel at 22.6, Chaves at 22.3, Doña Ana at 22.2, Mora at 21.9 — are still at or worse than 21.9 percent, the rate that made 2013 the worst year in the state's modern record. Three counties fall below the national average. Sandoval, Eddy, and Los Alamos. Los Alamos sits at 2.9 percent, a twelve-fold gap from McKinley, inside the same state, under the same budgets. Thirty-two thousand young New Mexicans are neither working nor in school. The Legislature's own analysts priced that at 623 million dollars a year. As of the last federal count, there were roughly 33,000 job openings in New Mexico and about 1.3 unemployed residents for every one of them. Nationally the figure is 1.1\. More people looking than positions posted — and that count is now the last of its kind, because the monthly state report is being discontinued in favor of an annual one. And the agency funded to close that gap served 12,600 people against its own target of 25,000, and did not track whether a single one of them found work. We count all of this. We publish it in report cards and data books and quarterly reviews. What we do not do is answer it. Eight years of one governor. Thirty-three years of one legislative majority. Apprenticeship funds, workforce funds, tax cuts for employers, credits for families, free tuition, child care, leave guarantees — all of it passed, all of it signed, much of it announced with a press release. Thirty of thirty-three counties poorer than the country they belong to. That is not a policy debate. That is a management record, and it belongs to the people who held every office while it was compiled. #### ENDNOTES ****1.** Signed legislation, Office of the Governor of New Mexico. Bill list including Senate Bill 5 (Workforce Development & Apprenticeship Fund), House Bill 28 (Public Project Revolving Fund), and Senate Bill 343 (Teacher Salary Rates). governor.state.nm.us — Signed Legislation, 2019–2026. ****2.** "Governor Lujan Grisham signs 33 bills," Office of the Governor, March 6, 2026\. Includes House Bill 7 (Apprenticeship Assistance Act Transfers), House Bill 270 (Contributions to Apprentice and Training Programs), House Bill 200 (New Homes For New Mexico), House Bill 64 (Public Project bonds), House Bill 253 (Public Education Changes). ****3.** "New Mexico Gov. signs 72 new laws, vetoes two bills in final session," March 2026\. Universal child care and medical malpractice reform. ****4.** "New Mexico's Omnibus Tax Bill," Tax Foundation, March 17, 2023, on House Bill 547 and gross receipts tax reduction; and "New Mexico governor signs omnibus tax bill," EY Tax News, April 3, 2024, on House Bill 252 establishing a flat 5.9 percent corporate income tax rate effective January 1, 2025, and expanding the solar market development credit to 30 million dollars annually and the advanced energy equipment credit to 5 million. ****5.** "Governor Should Put New Mexico's Tax Interests First," Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, March 6, 2026, on the child tax credit, expanded working families credits, paid sick leave, and higher minimum wage. ****6.** New Mexico House Bill 124 (2026), creating a New Americans Division within the Department of Workforce Solutions. Signed by the governor February 18, 2026. ****7.** 2026 KIDS COUNT Data Book, Annie E. Casey Foundation, released June 8, 2026\. New Mexico ranked 49th overall with a composite score of 281, moving up from 50th after five consecutive years in last place. Ranked 50th in education, 50th in family and community, 47th in economic well-being. ****8.** "New Mexico has highest poverty rates, among lowest wages, new report finds," Source New Mexico, May 19, 2026. ****9.** Legislative Finance Committee Performance Report Card, Workforce Solutions Department, FY22 Q3\. New Mexico ranked third from the bottom nationally in male labor force participation and fourth lowest among women in 2021\. Report card also documents 12,600 individuals receiving employment services in a Connections Office against a target of 25,000, in a year the Legislature appropriated 10 million dollars for reemployment services, case management, and youth apprenticeships. nmlegis.gov. ****10.** Legislative Finance Committee Performance Report Card, Workforce Solutions Department, FY24 Q2\. Documents that the number of individuals accessing services remained lower than prepandemic levels; that earnings after receiving employment services rose from 15,076 to 17,254 dollars; the LFC recommendation that the department "should begin tracking the impact of participation in these programs on subsequent participation in the workforce"; and the estimate that New Mexico would need roughly 116,000 additional workers to reach the national labor force participation rate, including approximately 40,000 prime-working-age adults. State labor force participation rate 57.3 percent against a national 62.5 percent. nmlegis.gov. ****11.** Party control of New Mexico state government, Ballotpedia, accessed August 2026\. Democrats held the New Mexico Senate every year from 1992 through 2024 in the tracked record, and the House every year except 2015 and 2016\. Seventeen years of Democratic trifecta control since 1992; zero years of Republican trifecta control. Current trifecta continuous since 2019. ****12.** "What is the poverty rate in New Mexico?", USAFacts, drawing on U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey data, updated April 2026\. Statewide rate 16.4 percent in 2024, or 343,235 people — the lowest level since the series began in 2010\. Peak of 21.9 percent, or 448,461 people, in 2013\. Child poverty fell from 29.5 percent in 2014 to 21.8 percent in 2024; adults under 65 from 20.1 to 15.3 percent; poverty among residents 65 and older rose from 13.2 to 14.0 percent. ****13.** County-level poverty estimates, same source as note 12\. County figures are five-year American Community Survey averages covering 2019 through 2023, and are therefore not directly comparable to the 2024 single-year statewide figure. Counties at or above 21.9 percent: McKinley 35.7, Socorro 29.0, Cibola 27.6, Luna 26.1, Quay 25.4, Sierra 24.9, San Juan 23.2, Guadalupe 23.0, San Miguel 22.6, Chaves 22.3, Doña Ana 22.2, Mora 21.9\. Below the national rate of 12.5 percent: Sandoval 12.4, Eddy 12.2, Los Alamos 2.9\. Bernalillo County 15.8 percent. ****14.** "Poverty Among All Persons," New Mexico Department of Health, NM-IBIS. Reports a state poverty rate of 16.9 percent against a U.S. rate of 12.5 percent, using five-year survey averages and small-area estimation. The divergence from the 16.4 percent figure in note 12 reflects differing methodology, not a factual conflict. ****15.** "New Mexico Job Openings and Labor Turnover — December 2025," U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Southwest Information Office, released February 25, 2026\. New Mexico had 33,000 job openings in December 2025, down from 42,000 in November, with a job openings rate of 3.5 percent against a national 3.9 percent. Hires 33,000\. Approximately 1.3 unemployed persons per job opening, compared with 1.1 nationally; 28 states and the District of Columbia recorded lower ratios and 13 recorded higher. Twelve-month averages ending December 2025: hires 34,000 monthly, separations 32,000 monthly, quits 18,000, layoffs and discharges 9,000\. A year earlier, in December 2024, the state openings rate was 5.4 percent against a national 4.5 percent. BLS notes this monthly state release is discontinued and moves to annual publication beginning July 2026. ****16.** Legislative Finance Committee, "Action Plan: Reconnecting Disconnected Youth," Program Evaluation Unit. Approximately 32,000 New Mexicans aged 16 to 24 neither working nor in school, at an estimated annual cost of 623 million dollars. nmlegis.gov. ****17.** "Economic News," New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions, June 2026 Labor Market Review; and "New Mexico Economy at a Glance," U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, data extracted August 18, 2026\. Statewide unemployment 4.8 percent in June 2026, up from 4.0 percent a year earlier. Luna County recorded the highest county unemployment rate in the state at 13.9 percent. ****18.** Annual Statewide Performance Report, Program Year 2022, New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions, submitted to U.S. Department of Labor. New Mexico met all five primary performance indicators for the Adult, Dislocated Worker, and Youth programs under the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. Cited for fairness: federally mandated compliance metrics were met in the same period state-set volume targets were missed.