Sandia National Laboratories pumped more than a billion dollars into the New Mexico and California economies in fiscal year 1995 with employee salaries, medical and dental benefits, retiree pensions, commercial purchases, and gross receipts taxes.

Sandia paid more than $400 million in wages to New Mexico employees during the fiscal year that ended September 30, 1995. New Mexico retiree pension payments during the same period amounted to about $47 million. An additional $30 million in medical and dental benefits for Sandia employees and retirees was paid to New Mexico health care providers in FY95.

Corresponding payments in California were more than $63 million in wages, more than $5 million in retiree pension payments, and about $5 million in medical and dental benefits.

Sandia's total FY95 payroll was more than $470 million.

Sandia's total commercial purchases of goods and services in FY95 topped $760 million, more than half of which were made with small business suppliers. More than $335 million of those purchases were made with New Mexico suppliers. Commercial purchases from California suppliers amounted to $112 million.

Sandia also paid the State of New Mexico almost $48 million in gross receipts taxes in FY95.

The above numbers do not take in account any multiplier effects. Using FY94 numbers, the US Department of Energy and New Mexico State University issued a report last summer that said Sandia's annual budget of about $1.4 billion supported a total economic impact of $4.9 billion or about six percent of total economic activity in New Mexico.