New Mexico added 13,100 jobs in 2024, averaging 1,091 jobs per month during the last 12 months of President Joe Biden’s term in the White House. Now, the rate of job growth has slowed significantly, with the state’s public and private employers adding a net 400 jobs in the 12 months since President Trump implemented implemented key campaign economic policies including tariffs, deportations and launched an undeclared war in the Middle East oil arena.
Year-end economic data from the State’s Department of Workforce Solutions shows that in 2024, the last year of Joe Biden’s presidency, New Mexico’s added 13,100 jobs in 2024 raising statewide employment to 898,600 non-farm jobs across the state.
That same year, Trump won re-election by campaigned to create a “blue-collar jobs boom” following the imposition of tariffs, mass deportations of undocumented residents, and expansion of oil and gas energy production. He has implemented all of those things but in New Mexico, job growth in 2025 also slowed to add just 8,800 jobs annually, slowing growth by 33% over one year as Trump fired or pushed out more than 200,00 federal employees (2,900 federal payroll positions were eliminated in New Mexico, data shows) and implemented global tariffs that pushed costs on staples and business supply trains higher. Similarly, the rate of job growth nationally decreased from 187,000 new jobs in Biden’s last month to just 49,000 per month by December 2025. Trump’s tariffs have since been declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The most recent 12-month rolling year-over-year jobs data, comparing total employment from April 2025 through April 2026 indicates growth has now all but stopped. (The Trump administration’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics said the 12-month period ending April 2026 showed “little net change over the prior 12 months.”) In New Mexico, the state’s employers added a net 400 total jobs from April 2025 through April 2026.
“Over the year, New Mexico’s total nonagricultural employment increased by 400 jobs, representing a gain of less than 0.1 percent.
New Mexico Workforce Solutions Labor Market Report ending Apr. 2026
“Over the year, New Mexico’s total nonagricultural employment increased by 400 jobs, representing a gain of less than 0.1 percent. The private sector was up 2,200 jobs, or 0.3 percent, while the public sector was down 1,800 jobs, or 0.9 percent,” the state reported. Only three of the state’s nine largest industries reported adding new positions over the year. Polling of New Mexico voters in April showed that just 1-in-3 New Mexicans now approve of the job Trump is doing on the economy.
During a Juneteenth roundtable with local Black small business owners last week, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich, a Democrat, directly tied the roundtable’s economic concerns directly to federal policy, naming tariffs and energy costs as the twin pressures squeezing small business margins. “Tariffs hurt small businesses,” Heinrich said. “It may sound good on paper, but none of the results we have seen have been favorable to the business community at large.”
In early June, Trump responded to economic critics with a lengthy social media post saying, “It’s raining jobs.” In April, polling showed that just