Houstonians optimistic on jobs

Kinder survey indicates that despite oil’s two-year slump, most in the area believe work opportunities to be excellent or good

The oil price slump and local unemployment levels that recently surpassed the national rate have not dampened Houstonians’ career optimism. Sixtyfour percent consider local job opportunities to be excellent or good, the 2017 Kinder Houston Area Survey indicates.

“Possibly, the general public senses that things are not as bad as they look in the official record of the moment,” said Stephen Klineberg, founding director of Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research.

The positive job opportunity figure, up slightly from 62 percent reported last year, is the second-highest rating since 2000.

It’s significantly higher than job market optimism when Houstonians were clawing their

way out of the 1980s oil bust. Positive ratings deteriorated to 36 percent in 1983 and then 11.5 percent in 1987, from 71 percent in 1982, according to the first Houston Area Survey ever completed.

Klineberg said the more recent recovery has been aided by a more diverse economy.

“We did oil the way Detroit did cars, the way Seattle did airplanes,” Klineberg said.

The most recent oil price slump cost the Houston region about 82,000 energy-related jobs. That’s a substantial number but remains small compared with the region’s total employment of about 3 million, said Patrick Jankowski, senior vice president of research for the Greater Houston Partnership.

“Most of the layoffs in the last two years were concentrated in the oil and gas industry,” he said. “And if you work outside oil and gas, things do not look bad for you.”

He added that many people moved to Houston for work, which provides a different perspective.

“Houston is a place about jobs,” he said. “It hasn’t lost that even with the downturn.”

The downturn bottomed out in the third quarter of last year, and Jankowski noted that the unemployment rate generally increases during the beginning of a recovery period as more people are looking for work. The unemployment rate doesn’t include people who aren’t actively looking for jobs, so it didn’t count Houstonians who tabled their searches until the market improved.

He said people shouldn’t be surprised if the unemployment rate stays high for the next quarter or two. The local unemployment rate was 5.7 percent in March, compared with a national unemployment rate of 4.6 percent, not seasonally adjusted.

He said the Kinder survey’s optimism is reinforced by home sales. During the 12-month period ending in March, Jankowski said 92,830 houses were sold in the Houston region. That’s the highest 12-month total on record.

“People don’t go out and buy a home if they’re worried they’re not going to have a job,” he said.

Chris Tripoli, president of A’La Carte Foodservice Consulting Group, said the restaurant industry is showing slow signs of improvement, and restaurateurs are cautiously optimistic for a better second half of the year.

He said the oil slump has prompted people to eat out less. Private parties have been smaller, and corporate spending not as lavish.

“As diverse as Houston is, we are still an energy town first and foremost,” he said.

“So when the main industry in town is stagnant, it does affect people’s buying habits.”

Even so, just 16 percent of the 2017 Kinder Houston Area Survey respondents named the economy as the biggest problem facing people in Houston.

Traffic took the top honors with 24 percent of respondents.

“Traffic, you encounter every day,” Jankowski said. “Joblessness, hopefully you never encounter. Or you only encounter once or twice in your life.”

The report also found that the percentage of Houston-area residents who believe education beyond high school is a prerequisite for success declined to 54 percent in 2017 from 73 percent in 2013.

“It’s striking because the reality is the good highpaying, low-skill blue-collar jobs have disappeared, and they’re not coming back,” Klineberg said.

He said the divide reflects political affiliations with 55 percent of those who voted for President Donald Trump compared with 35 percent of those who voted for Hillary Clinton saying “there are many ways to succeed in today’s economy with no more than a high school diploma.”

Hispanics and AfricanAmericans were more likely than Anglo residents to emphasize the importance of postsecondary education. Fifty-eight percent of Hispanics and 54 percent of African-Americans, compared with 48 percent of Anglos, thought that education beyond high school is needed to be successful.

Klineberg said that if African-Americans and Hispanics aren’t furthering their education, it’s not because they don’t recognize its importance.

It’s because of factors like concentrated poverty, and children attending overcrowded and underfunded inner city schools.

Participants in the 36th annual survey were interviewed between Jan. 24 and March 1, and it included 827 residents from Harris County, 400 from Fort Bend County and 402 from Montgomery County.