Eclipse Aviation's layoff of 600 workers at its Albuquerque manufacturing plant is bad news for the local economy, and not only because well-paid jobs will be lost, two economists said Friday.

Albuquerque's economy, while generally recessionproof, has slowed dramatically since 2006, and much of the reason has been loss of manufacturing jobs, including 2,000 at Intel over the last few years, said Lee Reynis, director of the University of New Mexico's Bureau of Business and Economic Research.

The Eclipse layoff makes the manufacturing sector a bigger drag on the larger economy, she said.

If Eclipse does not get its production processes sorted out and rehire workers, "it suggests they can't address the problem and the whole operation could go away," Reynis said. "This (company) has been one of the bright lights. We believe we have seen the emergence or expansion of a cluster, with suppliers and some depth there, hoping to create a critical mass (of companies)."

While the economic impact on the rest of New Mexico should be fairly minimal, the impact on the aviation cluster could be significant, said Anthony Popp, chairman of New Mexico State University's economics and international business department and co-director of the Office of Public Policy at NMSU's Arrowhead Center.

"From an economic development point of view, when you bring these types of companies in, you give them incentives to set up, then you have other companies like them come in," Popp said. "You try to change the structure of what's happening in that local economy."