Sonora, Arizona’s neighbor to the south, has now had two consecutive months of job growth.
Between February and August, the state shed roughly 40,000 formal jobs amid the coronavirus pandemic. But after two months of growth, the state has recouped more than 40% of them, according to the most recent federal data. It added nearly 12,000 in September and another 5,000 in October.
The figures do not take into account jobs in the informal sector, which accounts for a sizable portion of the workforce in Sonora and the rest of the country.
The growth came while the state was considered yellow, or moderate risk, on the federal semaforo — or traffic light — coronavirus scale. That brought reduced pandemic restrictions. But the state recently returned to orange, or high risk.
