The Great Recession is now charging in a new if not unexpected direction--the first mass layoffs of New Mexico government workers is being planned by the ABQ public schools. Up to 700 APS employees--many of them teachers--may be let go and some 500 positions left unfilled. The news rattled the state's government classes and shook the ground under City Hall where more unemployment means an ever steeper budget crisis.

The apparently unprecedented APS decision (has anything like this ever happened in post WWII ABQ?) shreds the argument that the city will be protected from the long-term damage of this ruthless recession by its huge government employment base.

State and city governments have slapped on hiring freezes; the state has already implemented furloughs and the city appears to be next in line for either furloughs, layoffs or both. The University of New Mexico is also in the recession-ravaged club, shedding employees and wielding the budget axe. The Santa Fe school system joins that crowded club, as it grapples with its own budget crisis.

Only the Federal government, not required to balance its budget, is keeping all the lights on in New Mexico, as the Washington printing presses pour money into the economy to fend off an even deeper sinkhole.

MARCH MADNESS

They say to beware the Ides of March, but the entire month has been an economic danger zone in the state's largest city, starting with the layoffs of 100 at the Garduno's restaurant chain, followed by 700 lost jobs at call center Convergys and then the coup de grâce--the 700 APS layoffs and the decision not to fill 500 other positions. All told that's 2,000 jobs gone with the spring wind.

We're still in the middle of this hurricane and can't say with any certainty what this historic reshaping of the city's economy means for the long term. The official ABQ metro jobless rate is now just shy of the unheard of 9 percent mark. With the recession now whipping the government work force, we could easily head to 10 percent, or even head down as people give up hope and stop looking for work.

We are replacing some of the lost jobs. The Rio Rancho Sprint call center will hire 200. Hewlett-Packard, also in Rio Rancho, will add some. But what will replace the government jobs that provide long-term security and good salaries and benefits? Where will the laid off teachers go? Where will the next generation apply for work if there are no jobs with the schools, the city or the state?

The age-old complaint is that many talented people have to leave ABQ and New Mexico to have a decent career. The major exception has always been local government and education careers. No longer, at least not now.

ON THE STREETS

Bernalillo County Commission candidate Dan Serrano, running in a Dem primary against Loretta Naranjo Lopez and Michelle Lujan Grisham, says his door-to-door campaigning reveals the dominance of the jobs issue in the working class West side district he seeks to represent:

If they answer the doors at all, it is all about jobs. Either they lost a job, a relative has or a friend of theirs is out of work. It is by far the number one issue I am hearing...

It's hard to see the population here shrinking, given the quality of life, but you are not going to build a new economy on well-off retirees or low paying service jobs. And if the population is not moving up much, there will be a need for fewer small businesses, the creation of which is seen as the way out of this mess by leading thinkers in economic and political circles here.

A SHAKEN CITY

The windows of City Hall rattled when the APS announcement came down. The city and Mayor RJ Berry now face a deficit for the budget year starting July 1st of perhaps over $60 million as gross receipts activity crashes in the wake of the consumer pullback.

And what's to come?

APS employs 14,000. The layoffs and hiring freezes would total 1,200 or nine percent of its work force. If you work for APS, you're not going to be shopping the sales at Dillards much, or stopping by Yanni's for souvlaki. That means even less tax money flowing into city coffers.

You can argue that 90 percent of the city is still working. You can argue that, but it is not going to free families from their fear.

WHERE'S THE FAIRNESS?

While we await a turn in the economy, or a new template for economic development that will bring in jobs to replace those being shed, the issue of fairness arises in the latest sour headlines. For example, the University of New Mexico says it will clean its classrooms less often, saving $268,000 over the next two years. But that means less work for the lowest of the lowest paid--the janitorial staff.

Yet UNM stays behind its wall of silence when it comes to the bloated bureaucracy of 20 vice-presidents costing the state over $4.5 million annually. It is also quiet on the overpayment of the school's executive VP ($428,000 a year and $50k in deferred compensation) and its university president who has taken a pay cut, but is still pulling down well over $500,000 a year.

UNM could eliminate one VP position and save all the money they would by cutting the hours of the janitors and support staff. Or they could trim all those VP salaries to make up the money. Why don't they?

It's the same at APS where questions of a bulging bureaucracy protecting overpaid administrators fall into a black hole, aided by school board members who seem to contract Stockholm Syndrome as soon as they're elected.

Ditto for Santa Fe, where the Legislature met in special session, but did nothing about the hundreds of unnecessary and highly paid political appointees, but instead engaged in the ultimate political disconnect by passing that now vetoed tax on food.

With too few exceptions, the New Mexican political classes remain cocooned in comfort, seemingly concerned only with preserving their small isles of turf or their next campaign contribution. They observe the rampant economic disparity as if it were a night at the Santa Fe Opera, not the real-world, tragic farce it has become.