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Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 507 - Texas Still Has Room For Improvement.

Texas Is America's Job Creation Station-

Lately, this blog has focused a lot on how Texas is responsible for essentially all of the private job growth in the United States-- and then some. Almost 300% of it, over the past year.

But we should be careful to explain what's going on here, because this is not the late-70s, when the Texas economy was booming while the U.S. economy languished.

No, Texas has become a lot more diversified in its economy since then, and its job creation and job loss patterns tend to follow the rest of the country. The 4.4% unemployment rate in Texas is definitely up from earlier in the year.

However, in recent years, Texas has outpaced U.S. patterns, just slightly.

Indeed, Texas has outpaced (yet tracked) U.S. job growth for quite some time:

So, are we sure it isn't just oil and gas that's propping Texas up right now?

Positive.

The large service sectors consisting of professional and business services, education and health, and leisure and hospitality generated the bulk of jobs created in April and May.

Generally, these trends have held up beyond May, although in the "trade, transportation, and utilities" sector, Texas has added roughly 10,000 jobs just in the past three months.

Oil and gas is a big player in job creation in Texas, but it's not the bulk of the jobs. Not even remotely close. Texas is doing well in most sectors of the economy, because Texas generally has a good business climate.

Again, though, we should be careful. Texas has probably the best business climate among all of the large states. However, it does not have the best business climate, period. Our property taxes are too high. Our overall tax burden has crept up a bit. And our new margins tax is hurting small business owners (without delivering promised property tax relief).

Texas has a lot going for it, including a gargantuan budget surplus that legislators will be tempted to spend in 2009. Instead, they need to aggressively provide for tax relief to keep Texas the engine of our nation's GDP growth and the job creation powerhouse of the country.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Texas Job Growth.

Posted by Will Franklin · 25 July 2008 08:28 AM

Comments

Posted by: sethstorm at July 25, 2008 04:23 PM