San Antonio’s jobless rate up for February

The San Antonio metro area’s unemployment rate edged up in February after trending downward the previous four months.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas tallied the area’s unemployment rate at 6.5 percent, up from January’s 6.3 percent.

While the month showed a slight worsening, it’s still less than half of April 2020’s 14.1 percent, the record high reached during the pandemic. By comparison, however, last month’s rate is more than double February 2020’s 3 percent.

“I’m more optimistic, certainly, than the end of last year, and even earlier this year — right now, things are looking pretty positive,” said Christopher Slijk, associate economist at the Dallas Fed. “That’s, again, contingent on how the vaccination rates play out versus the continued spread of COVID and COVID variants.”

Slijk said it’s normal for slight volatility in the unemployment numbers from month to month, and the bump up is not overly concerning at this point.

“As long as it’s not a persistent upward trend … it’s not notable yet,” he said.

The Dallas Fed predicted 6 percent employment growth in its February Texas economic forecast released Friday. That’s down from January’s 6.5 percent.

In February, the San Antonio-new Braunfels area gained 5,400 nonfarm jobs, up 6.4 percent over the previous month. That significantly outpaced statewide employment numbers. According to the Dallas Fed, the state shed 18,900 jobs for a 1.8 decline.

“That’s not a huge decline and not unexpected given the winter storms

that we saw last month,” he said. “Generally, the sentiment is that (the winter storm) is sort of a bump in the road for our recovery, but the momentum is strong enough that it’s not going to derail our growth for the rest of the year.”

Despite the local job growth, nearly 18,000 people in the region filed for unemployment benefits in February, the third highest number in the state, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Most applicants came from elementary and secondary schools, temporary help services and full-service restaurant jobs.

More than 82,700 people are currently unemployed in the area, according to the TWC.

“A lot of the more timely indicators that we see for March show that that this month will come in quite strong,” Slijk said. He noted that it’s too early to tell the effect of the recent government stimulus package, but if past stimuli are any indicator, they boost consumer spending.

The metro area’s February unemployment rate was lower than the state’s rate of 6.9 percent. The nation’s jobless rate was 6.3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The TWC calculated the area’s unemployment rate at 6.8 percent, down from January’s 6.6 percent. The TWC’S numbers aren’t seasonally adjusted and differ slightly from the Dallas Fed statistics.