By Ingo Winzer | Forbes
It used to be that people traveled to the Southwest for their health – for the dry, fresh air – or to retire. Now they move there for the jobs.
Take a look at the table and you’ll see that the growth of jobs in the past year, in all but a few of the markets, is well over the national average rate of 1.8 percent. We can expect this growth to continue. Excluding New Mexico, the Southwest states have the fastest population growth in the country.
The original economies of many Southwest markets – minerals, cattle ranching, agriculture – long ago gave way to broader developments, like oil and gas extraction, the migration of industries out of California, the expansion of federal and state institutions (like universities), and the growth of tourism.
