Things are looking good in Central texas…
April 17th, 2009 Categories: Austin Area News and Events
Central Texas Economy In Perspective
by Beverly Kerr, Chamber Vice President of Research
On a year-over-year basis, Texas job growth went negative (73,000 jobs or 0.7%) for the first time in the current recession with February’s numbers. The 11 Texas metros still seeing growth added a total of 11,800 jobs, however 12 Texas metros lost a total of 51,000 jobs. Austin was the only large Texas metro adding jobs (1,300 or 0.2%). The top three performers for both net new jobs and rate of growth were Odessa (2,200 or 3.5%), Midland (2,300 or 3.4%) and Killeen (2,500 or 2.0%). The metro loosing the greatest number of jobs in Texas was Dallas with 29,000 (-1.2%).
While the new February numbers for Texas provide further evidence that Texas is in recession (the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas declared Texas in recession with an article in Southwest Economy last month), Texas metros remain high performing relative to those in most of the rest of the country. In fact, job growth is negative in all 50 of the nation’s largest metros, except Austin!
The rates of job loss in San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, and Dallas are still moderate enough for them to remain among the nation’s top 10 performing metros.
Creating the same kind of ranking on the 100 largest metros yields only six metros adding jobs between February 2008 and February 2009. In this ranking, Austin’s growth would be outpaced by Oklahoma City, Baton Rouge, Wichita, and Bethesda, with New Orleans following Austin as the only other metro with net job growth.
Our other ranking we customarily do when the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes its monthly press release of metropolitan area numbers is of the lowest unemployment rates among the nation’s largest metros. Austin’s usual top 10 ranking was speculated to be in jeopardy when the January’s rate was reported at 6.4%. However, as unemployment rates have climbed across the country, this ranking on the February estimates shows Austin and the other Texas metros continue to hold places among the best performing metros on this metric as well.
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