Important Context:

The graphs below show annual wages (for workers with four quarters of consecutive wages in a given year) for different cohorts over time. While wages only provide limited information on a person’s experience in the workforce, seeing these trends broken down this way sheds light on new questions and insights.

The first collection of graphs investigates employment metrics for students who received a degree or certificate from a New Mexico public college or university. The second collection of graphs investigates employment metrics after the latest calendar year in which an adult education student (individual who received 12 or more hours of instruction) participated.

Other Considerations:

Quarterly wage data come from the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions (NMDWS) Unemployment Insurance (UI) database. This information is submitted by employers who support the UI program through the taxes they pay. These wage records include the total amount of wages paid to each employee by those employers. Wage records are used for counting numbers of individuals employed as well as analyzing the amount of associated wages.

While these wage data can be very informative, it is important to know that they only tell part of the story. Our wage data do not describe circumstances such as unemployment or lack of work, self-employment, retirement, working in another state (other than New Mexico), attending a postsecondary institution full time, working for the federal government or military, or leaving the labor force for another reason.

Yearly Average vs. Median Wage: Yearly wages are averaged or a median is calculated per year for the selected cohort. The average (also called the mean) is found by adding all the wages together and then dividing by the total number of individuals in the cohort. The median is found by putting all the values in order from smallest to largest and then taking the value in the middle of the list. All amounts shown for wages are the original amounts reported by employers. No adjustments have been made for inflation or any other factors.

Understanding the Impact of COVID-19:

As noted by the U.S. Department of Education, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on student learning and other outcomes related to education and workforce. Data reflecting the time period beginning in March of 2020 and beyond should be considered with this context.

Why does this matter?

RISE NM links information from all levels of education (including early childhood, K-12, and higher education) with workforce data to help us understand how people move and progress from school into their careers. Studying these patterns can help our state make better decisions as we aid New Mexicans in succeeding from cradle to career.

How to use the interactive dashboards:

You will find filters, drop-down menus, and tabs for every dashboard to help you explore and discover insights within the data. You can also click on interactive elements in the dashboards and hover over data points to see more information.

Tips and tricks:

• Make sure to click the blue refresh button in the upper right-hand corner of the dashboard every time you add, change, or remove filters.
• Click the far-right icon to reset any filters.
• Select and drag an area of the chart to zoom in or click on a trend line to isolate a specific trend line.
• Click the blue person icon in the bottom right-hand corner for accessibility options.

Understanding the Impact of COVID-19:

As noted by the U.S. Department of Education, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on student learning and other outcomes related to education and workforce. Data reflecting the time period beginning in March of 2020 and beyond should be considered with this context.

Visualization Technical Documentation

Please click here to learn more about the visualization technical documentation.