Report touts UNM’s $6B economic impact on state

The University of New Mexico on Tuesday issued a report saying the school in the last fiscal year pumped more than $6 billion into the state economy in the form of salaries and economic output.

The 23-page report describes UNM’s economic muscle in terms of university operations, student spending, alumni human capital and technology transfer. By the statesupported university’s calculations, those areas account for about 25,000 jobs, $3.5 billion annually in employee compensation and $3.1 billion in economic output.

The report prepared by research assistant professor Kelly O’Donnell of the university’s School of Public Administration said UNM operations alone accounted for $2.1 billion in economic impact and supported 16,402 jobs that paid $876 million in salaries.

Startup businesses affiliated with the university’s technology-transfer and economicdevelopment organization, STC.UNM, in fiscal 2017 accounted for $19.1 million in compensation to 247 New Mexicans and $32.2 million in economic output, the document states. Spending by nonresident students translated to $78.5 million in economic impact that year, the report says.

The researcher calculated that more than $1 billion of UNM revenue that year originated outside New Mexico, much of it from Medicaid and Medicare.

Payments for patient services at UNM hospitals and clinics accounted for 55 percent of UNM’s total $2.3 billion revenue in fiscal 2017, or $1.26 billion. Two-thirds of that, $948 million, came from Medicare and Medicaid payments by the federal government, according to the report.

State and local appropriations made up 13 percent of revenues that year, the next largest source, according to the report.

Clinical operations at UNM hospitals and clinics also represented the largest UNM expense that year, $1.35 billion, followed by academic instruction at $466 million.

The report found that more than half the 184,000 living alumni of the state’s flagship university have a New Mexico address, earn about $2.3 billion more than they would without their degrees, and spend $982.4 million on locally produced goods and services as well as state and local taxes.

Earnings and spending by UNM graduates created 7,313 jobs that generate $2.6 billion in wages and salaries and generate $933 million in economic output, according to the study.