Tough Decision - Albuquerque or Denver?

[ziaAirmac]

First, a belated welcome Yukon. I enjoyed watching your posts build to the big move! Second, getting to something from your original post, I think Albuquerque's job market is amazingly diverse given the Labs and Kirtland being on the hill. This is off the top of my head, but these are some of the new and relatively new businesses I thought of when reading your original post:

1. Lion's Gate Studios ( I believe in Mesa Del Sol )

2. Eclipse Aviation (survived a underperforming engine swap-out mid certification to reign the only Very Light Jet standing. Last I heard deposits were over two THOUSAND airframes deep. Bye bye Adams aircraft (major competitor) in....Denver.)

3. Tesla motors (builds a sweet little electric roadster and intends to build an electric sedan called the Whitestar project.)

4. TempurPedic (just built a million square foot factory on the west side.)

5. Can't think of the name, but there's a new solar cell factory going in at Mesa Del Sol.

6. Fidelity Investments is opening shop here. Ad in the past Sunday Journal already hunting for people.

7. Verizon (new call center coming in)

8. Kirtland... I know one of your original points was the worry of too much federal work, but if you've got to have it, it may as well be stable. Kirtland AFB came out of the last round of base closures with...new jobs and missions. As other bases were shutting down, we picked up a training squadron for the OV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor.

So: film, aviation, financial, eco-power, telecommunications, automotive and super mattresses. And not just also-rans...top contenders or technology leaders in their respective fields. That's diversified!

[yukon]

Thanks ziaAirmac! One of the reasons I finally chose ABQ was the diversity you wrote about. I was afraid that too many of the job opportunties in PHX were related to the housing market, and felt when the real estate imploded, so would many of the jobs there. Denver was really nice, but too dark and felt crowded to me (think it's the geography, not the people). And it wasn't as sunny. Gotta have sunshine!

I work for a small CPA firm and the variety of business industries/fields our clients are in is amazing!