Austin gains 37,700 jobs
Year-over-year 4.5% increase is called a ‘sizzling pace.’
The January employment numbers often tell two different stories.
On one hand, the chill of winter and the post-holiday hangover regularly results in modest but widespread job cuts during the month. This year was no exception, as Austin-area employers cut payrolls by 1.2 percent in January, according to data released Friday by the Texas Workforce Commission.
On the other hand, with the turn of the year, the commission also recalibrates the benchmarks it uses to calculate workforce numbers, adjusting its formulas to better account for developing trends and data anomalies, such as self-employed workers.
This year, those adjustments showed that Austin’s job growth might be even hotter than previously thought. According to the revised commission data, employers in the Austin metro area provided 37,700 more jobs this January than last — a year-overyear increase of 4.5 percent.
“A sizzling pace, on par with the pre-recession peak
of 4.5 to 4.7 percent in 2006-2007,” said Brian Kelsey, principal of Civic Analytics, an Austin-based economic development firm. “Only this time, (it comes) without the debt-fueled housing and construction drivers.”
Austin’s soaring job growth has helped keep the local unemployment rate well below the state and national averages, despite the region’s booming population and labor force growth in recent years.
Before adjusting for seasonal hiring trends, the metro-area unemployment rate was 4.7 percent in January — up from 4.5 percent in December, thanks to the usual January hiring chill. But it was far lower than the 5.9 percent rate posted in January of last year.
While the workforce commission doesn’t immediately adjust its employment data to account for seasonal effects, calculations by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas put Austin’s seasonally adjusted jobless rate at 4.6 percent — the lowest it has been since July 2008. Statewide, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell to 5.7 percent in January, down from 6 percent the prior month. Texas employers added 33,900 jobs during January after seasonal adjustments, the commission said.
The state should continue to outpace national averages for job creation throughout the current year, according to a recent report from the Dallas Fed. Indicators and a recent acceleration in statewide job growth suggest that job counts in the state will increase by 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent in 2014, the report said.
Nationwide, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 6.6 percent in January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (The bureau released its February workforce data Fri-
It’s possible some of the especially large decrease in jobless residents could stem from the elimination of longterm unemployment benefits.
day, noting that the national unemployment rate ticked up to 6.7 percent last month.)
In the Austin metro area, employers’ strong job-creation rates helped soak up the region’s rapid population growth and boosted the strength of the underlying workforce numbers. The official labor force — local residents who were working or looking for jobs — grew by 2 percent since January of last year, yet the number of employed Austin workers grew even faster, at a 3.3 percent rate over the same time.
Meanwhile, the number of unemployed Austin residents still looking for work plummeted by 18.9 percent during the same stretch, according to commission data.
While the local labor force increased overall, it’s possible some of the especially large decrease in jobless residents could stem from the elimination of long-term unemployment benefits, which Congress declined to renew at the end of last year.
National economists surmised that many of the long-term unemployed would cut off their job search after losing those safety net benefits, dropping out of the official labor force entirely. Ironically, that would nudge unemployment rates lower.
The metro-area employment numbers suggest that factor had a marginal impact, if any, on the Austin jobless rate in January, which rose in line with typical increases for the first month of the year.
In fact, the 1.2 percent drop in Austin-area payrolls — a decline of 10,200 jobs during the month — was slightly better than the average January decline over the three prior years. And while the January job cuts were spread across most sectors of the regional economy, so also were the year-over-year gains.
For example, the metro area’s professional and business services sector cut 3,500 jobs during the month, a drop of 2.5 percent. Yet the same employers provided 8,900 more jobs this January than last, a gain of 7 percent.
Within that sector, the professional, scientific and technical services firms, which include many of Austin’s hightech employers, added 5,500 jobs over the same 12-month span, an increase of 7.8 percent.
“As the eyes of the tech world are on Austin (and South by Southwest), we encourage our students and adults — no matter the field — to add programming skills to their portfolio,” said Drew Scheberle, senior vice president at the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce. “With the medical school and regional population growth, we also know that opportunities in the health care field will be strong in the coming years.”
Other big gainers after the annual benchmark revisions included employment services, where payrolls increased 14.3 percent, and the leisure and hospitality sector, where payrolls increased 10.1 percent.
The public sector added jobs in January. Modest local hiring by all levels of government helped boost year-over-year job counts by 1.5 percent. Most of those annual gains have come from local government hiring, according to commission data.