Recently released data from the Texas Workforce Commission indicates that year-over-year growth in Houston area employment declined to 2.0% and thus continues its steady decline since peaking in June 2007 at 4.8%. What is encouraging so far is that job growth in recent months has remained fairly robust. Since June of this year, the metropolitan labor market has added approximately 7,500 seasonally adjusted jobs per month, with the September to October gain was also equal to that average. As has been the case for the past 18 months, the vast major of new jobs has been in the region’s upstream energy sector. The non-energy base and the secondary sectors are now experiencing growth at their lowest level since the post recession year of 2004.
Presently, however, we need to be somewhat careful in reading too much into the employment numbers, since we can’t be sure that TWC is accurately accounting for immediate post-Ike losses and the inevitable rebound gains that were to follow. Right now, it is hard to see any “Ike effect” in the data. We may have to wait until the re-benchmarked data are released in March to see it.
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