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The Texas Workforce Commission says the Texas unemployment rate slipped to 4.8 percent in May, down from five percent during April. The nationwide rate is at 4.3 percent. A surge in hiring energy field workers is credited — 6,000 new jobs were added. Parker Harvey is an economist with Workforce Solutions.
“Correct, yeah. And also, I mean the rig count is now up almost double, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see, you know, job increases there as well as manufacturing, you know, the parts, equipment, et cetera, to kind of service those activities. So the things are still looking pretty good there. The recovery in oil and gas does seem to be holding up.”
Houston’s unemployment rate is a bit higher than the state’s at 5.1 percent.
“The direction of the trend for the unemployment rate here in Houston still seems to be sort of ticking upward. The big decliner for this month was trade, transportation and utilities. It may very well be just a reflection of the national trends of buying more things online, consuming perhaps less in a retail setting.”
Amarillo had the lowest unemployment in Texas last month at 3.1 percent. The McAllen-Edinburg-Mission area had the highest rate at 7.5 percent.