Newly released unemployment numbers show that New Mexico leads the nation in that statistic. New Mexico's unemployment rate is roughly 5.6%, which is down from 7.3% last year.

Despite that drop, the national unemployment rate is roughly 3.8%, which marks a 6.2% decline from last year.

“What we are in right now is still very much a recovering economy,” University of New Mexico Associate Professor of Finance Dr. Reilly White said. "This is often it sounds surprising for many people, but this is very typical, often here in New Mexico. We have recovered, we’re recovering jobs, and they’re increasing in sectors that were hit the hardest by the pandemic."

According to White, New Mexico's infrastructure is arranged in a way where employers do not fire employees or hire new employees as rapidly, so New Mexico's economy is lagging a few months behind the rest of the country and is still coming back from the economic downturn of the COVID-19 pandemic. Conversely from other states, New Mexico has a high percentage of the population employed by local governments and government-related jobs which makes the process of hiring and firing is slower than in most locations. These statistics exclude agricultural jobs, according to a report from KRQE.