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New Mexico

New Mexicans like to boast that they have the second highest number of Ph.D.s per capita in the country. A lack of water in arid New Mexico has limited its ability to attract industry, but the rapidly changing information age gives it a leg up because of the brainpower of its workforce.

The state targets and attracts high-skilled jobs. Martin Marietta, the world's largest aerospace/electronics company, has major operations in New Mexico because of the federal laboratory at White Sands.

Intel, the giant computer chip manufacturer, is another major player in the state's economy. In May, Intel announced plans to invest $2 billion to expand its manufacturing facility at Rio Rancho.

The artist colony that has made Santa Fe famous is now taking a back seat to a computer-driven industry known as informatics. The term refers to a cluster of businesses that make computer software that digests the reams of computer-generated raw data and makes it understandable. Roughly a dozen companies in and around Santa Fe are developing this kind of software. Informatics is still a niche industry, but players already are making profits, and the industry has the potential for explosive growth.

New Mexico has not targeted biotechnology companies, but they are coming to the state anyway, primarily because of related research being conducted at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. New Mexico also has had significant success in attracting parts suppliers that serve assembly plants across the border in Mexico that produce auto products and machinery.

In 1997, New Mexico's $45.2 billion Gross State Product gave it a rank of 37th among the states, but the GSP growth rate from 1996-97 was 6.3 percent, ranking it 18th nationally.