Jal, New Mexico.
Typical home $140,872 (-4.3% in a year). Hobbs, NM metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — $265 (-26%) since Feb 2022.
- 1 year
- Down $6,311 -4%
- $147,183$140,872 since Sep 2025
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Jal$739
- New Mexico$1,658
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Jal, NM fell 4.3% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Jal, Lea County, New Mexico
Jal is a city of 2,202 people in Lea County. Unemployment in Lea County was 4.3% in August 2026, and the county had 0.8% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Lea County work in schools and health care, then farming.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Jal is a small city in the far southeastern corner of New Mexico, in Lea County, close to the Texas line. It is a small, close-knit place, and homes here cost less than in much of the country. Across Lea County, household incomes sit a little above the middle of the national range.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, and a good number work in farming, forestry and mining, in transport and warehousing, or in the building trades. Across Lea County, the largest workplaces include Hobbs Schools, Nor-lea Hospital and Mewbourne Oil Company. Unemployment across the county is somewhat higher than a year ago, while the number of jobs has edged up slightly.
Things to do. Winters are cool, with highs that stay mild and lows that dip below freezing, and snow is rare. Summers are hot, and the year is dry, with little rain or melted snow. The mild winter days and dry air make time outdoors comfortable for much of the year.
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- 859households
- 5%work from home
What people in Lea County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Lea County had 34,047 jobs in 2025, 0.8% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 60° and lows near 27°; warmest in July, with highs near 96° and lows near 68°. About 2 inches of snow and 12 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Jal weather station, under a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Lea County
- Hobbs SchoolsSchool district813FTE
- City of HobbsCity and town managers' offices591
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters437
- Nor-lea HospitalCritical access hospital433FTE
- Mewbourne Oil CompanyOil and gas field development for own account417
- Lovington SchoolsSchool district394FTE
- dba Urenco USAUranium, enriched, manufacturing352
- New Mexico Junior CollegeTwo-year college316
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 47 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 4,594 people in all across the county; Jal has one of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- HailRelatively high
- LightningRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- WildfireRelatively moderate
- Heat wavesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Jal’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively low. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Lea County and the Hobbs, NM metro.
Jal home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Jal$140,872
- New Mexico$315,812
- United States$366,157
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Zip codes with a Jal address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Jal — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.