The Albuquerque Living Cities Integration Initiative is focused on collecting and reviewing three different types of data: long-term outcomes focused on wide-spread job creation and economic mobility, medium-term outcomes focused on growing businesses, and short-term outcomes focused on helping one individual at a time. ABQLC’s research has shown that coordinated efforts invested in both long- and shor-term strategies are the key to helping our city reach its full potential as a place to live, work and prosper. While the three data categories focus on different areas, they are all pointing to the same thing: Albuquerque’s economy is growing, just not as quickly as the city needs to keep up with national averages.

Data collected by the City of Albuquerque shows that Albuquerque continues to improve in all five major economic markers, but the progress is slow. Albuquerque continues to fall behind national averages and other similarly sized states in the Southwest for four out of five of the focus areas:

• The city’s annual growth in per capita income continues to surpass the national average at 4.4% vs. the national 3.70%; however,
• Albuquerque’s per capita income remains almost $10,000 below the national average at $38,563 vs. the national average of $48,112;
• The city’s annual job growth has climbed steadily since 2009, but remains behind at 1.69% vs. the national 1.76%;
• Albuquerque’s unemployment rate has also continued to improve, but remains higher than the national average by a full percentage point at 5.87%; and,
• The percentage of the city’s population currently employed by the government is 21.51% compared to the national 15.40%

While economic recovery in Albuquerque continues to see major improvements, our growth continues to be slow and steady. It will take continued collaboration of institutions and organizations aligning around support for entrepreneurs to reach our goal of 10,000 jobs by 2025.