The Texas Jobs Machine is Remarkable to Watch: Dallas Is Where the Jobs Are

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SOURCE: BLOOMBERG

URL: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-11-21/dallas-is-where-the-jobs-are

by Justin Fox


In the early days of the current economic expansion, Texas led the way. That stopped being true a couple of years ago; according to state jobs data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, California has added the most payroll jobs (2.4 million) since employment bottomed out nationally in February 2010; Utah is the leader on a percentage basis (22.1 percent).

Still, Texas hasn't exactly fallen apart. Yes, a sharp drop in oil and natural gas prices has ended Houston's boom, for now, at least. The much-smaller metropolitan areas of San Antonio and Austin are experiencing slowdowns as well. But the state is still creating jobs -- and it's creating most of them in its biggest metropolitan area, Dallas-Fort Worth.

Tale of Two Texas Cities

There are only four states (California, Texas, Florida and New York) that have added more jobs since February 2010 than metro Dallas's 661,000. Dallas has also added jobs at a faster pace than any of the nation's other 15 largest metropolitan areas (the Dallas area is the fourth largest, with an estimated 7.1 million people as of July 1, 2015).

The Great Recession was milder in Texas than just about anywhere else, so Dallas's performance stands out even more (and Houston's looks a lot better) if you measure over the course of the entire business cycle, starting with the employment peak of January 2008.

An Even Bigger Lead

Since January 2008, in fact, the Dallas-Fort Worth area -- which as of 2015 was home to 2.2 percent of the nation's people -- has accounted for 8 percent of U.S. job growth. The New York metropolitan area accounted for even more (9.8 percent), but the New York metro area has almost three times as many people.

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