Local News

Austin Business Journal, June 3, 2006

The region added about 3,400 jobs between April 2008 and April 2009, making it the only one of the nation's 38 largest cities to post a job gain, new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows. This is the third consecutive month that Austin has outperformed all of the other U.S. cities with labor forces of 750,000 or more. The unemployment rate for April stood at 5.8 percent.

The 0.4 percent increase in job totals is modest, but still a better showing than cities such as Portland (down 4.7 percent) and Raleigh, N.C. (down 3.3 percent).

Jobs in goods producing industries in the Austin area dropped by 500 jobs in April, a slowdown from the rapid pace of recent losses, according to an analysis of the data from the Capital Area Council of Governments. Retail, hotel, and restaurant jobs are all up from this time last year. And professional and business service sector employment is back to its all-time high last seen in October 2008.

But another key sector for the region, technology, isn't doing quite as well. Computer, semiconductor and other electronic component manufacturing is still falling. Jobs in the semiconductor segment fell to 15,700 jobs, back to spring 2006 totals.

As Texas cities go, Austin's 5.8 percent unemployment rate was one of the healthiest. Dallas-Fort Worth stood at 6.6 percent in April and Houston at 6.3 percent. Only San Antonio's rate was lower than Austin's at 5.4 percent. Smaller metro areas including McAllen, Brownsville and Beaumount all had rates above 8 percent.