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Slowing Texas Economy?

11.19.2011

Kirk Ladendorf of the Austin American-Statesman crunches the October jobs report from the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC): Job growth, employment data point to a slowing Texas economy. My reactions:

Although Austin’s year-over-year job growth numbers are lagging behind statewide totals, economic consultant Brian Kelsey said he sees strong pockets of growth in temporary hiring by tech-oriented staffing companies.

A number of growing tech startups in town are saying they have openings for highly skilled jobs that are going unfilled, Kelsey said, who was formerly an economist for the Capital Area Council of Governments.

“Overall, I think Austin is going to fare better than Texas as a whole,” Kelsey said.

Kirk makes good observations about major industry trends–3.2 percent growth in manufacturing is especially welcome–but unfortunately these data tell only part of the story. Nearly one out of every four workers in Austin is self-employed, and most of those jobs are not reflected in TWC’s monthly jobs reports. That’s a huge (and growing) portion of economic activity that is not easily tracked when relying on free, publicly available data sources.

Not that any of this is TWC’s fault. Federal and state policymakers make terrible decisions about cutting funding for data programs all the time. I’m amazed at what TWC, Census, and other government agencies do offer given their paltry budgets (see, for example, SWAP and OnTheMap). Economic developers, workforce trainers, educators, and social assistance providers rely heavily on public data to run efficient programs, and we treat it like a luxury item.

Since we can’t rely on federal and state policymakers, it’s up to us at the local level to develop our own data, which is why I’m excited to see the City of Austin getting serious about open data. But we also need to think about how we can produce more real-time economic and workforce data so we can do a better job tracking the Austin economy and adjusting our economic and workforce development efforts as needed.

Maybe a project for when we get back in January.