After he lost his job in construction, Fred Arellano spent nearly every day looking for a new one.

He went to job fairs, interviews — anything he could think of to get work.

Like thousands of others across America, Arellano's salvation came from the federal government when he got word that Star Paving would hire him as superintendent on the latest phase of the U.S. 84/285 highway reconstruction in northern Santa Fe County, a federal stimulus project.

"I was elated," said the 54-year-old married father of two grown sons.

Arellano is one of 1,500 people who could find employment on highway projects across New Mexico, and one of some 22,000 who could get work as a result of the state's $3 billion share of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Locally, if the city of Santa Fe gets the federal stimulus money on its wish list, 110 people could get work in wastewater projects. It's unclear what other jobs could be created in the state.

Federal spending is supposed to add 600,000 new jobs to the economy countrywide in the next few months, Vice President Joe Biden said earlier this week.

For Arellano, the job couldn't have come soon enough. After one company he worked for ran out of projects, he was starting to fear he wouldn't find anything in this economy.

"I have lots of experience, 33 years of experience, and it was kind of scary because I know my experience has to mean something. But for a while it didn't mean anything," he said in a phone interview Tuesday, traffic whizzing by him in the background.

Several other people applied for the same job, he said, a position that's tough to come by and pays between $25 and $30 an hour.

"You really have to go out and look and eventually you find something," Arellano said.

For Arellano, his days now include overseeing crews working on water and sewer lines, and laying new curbing and fresh asphalt on the Northern New Mexico project. Work on the entire $68 million project — which includes adding frontage lanes on both sides of the highway — stretches from Pojoaque to Española, state officials have said.

The project will be done in five segments, two of which are funded by federal stimulus money. The work was part of Gov. Bill Richardson's Investment Partnership, or GRIP, which fell short of the money it originally was expected to have available. Some of the highway segments will be done simultaneously.

Not everyone has been as successful as Arellano: New Mexico's unemployment rate in April was 5.8 percent, down slightly from 5.9 in March. A year ago, it was 3.9 percent. The unemployment rate nationally was 8.9 percent in April.

And, not all of the state's stimulus money will go to projects or jobs. Almost half will go to education and Medicaid, while less than 10 percent is expected to be spent on highway construction and, in turn, on jobs like Arellano's.

The state expects to get $278 million for infrastructure, which will pay for some 80 transit projects, roughly 70 local road projects and three airport-improvement projects.

Contact Kate Nash at 986-3036 or knash@sfnewmexican.com. Read her blog at www.greenchilechatter.com.