FYI: Texas Comptroller’s Weekly Economic Outlook
January 9, 2013
Job growth, sales tax collections — both from business and consumer purchases — as well as automobile sales, signal that the Texas economy has emerged from the recent recession.
Another indicator that the state’s economy has been comparatively healthy was the U.S. Census Bureau report that Texas added more people (421,000) than any other state from 2010 to 2011. Although Texas has only 8 percent of the nation’s population, the state added nearly 19 percent of the nation’s population growth for the year.
By December 2011, Texas employers replaced all 427,600 jobs shed during the recession as our economy rebounded more quickly than the U.S. as a whole, and continues to add jobs. Nationally, through November 2012 only 52 percent of recession-hit jobs have been recovered.
Texas and the nation returned to economic growth in 2010 and 2011. In 2011, Texas real gross domestic product grew by 2.4 percent, compared with 1.6 percent GDP growth for the nation.
Texas replaced all of its recession-hit jobs by December 2011
The number of Texas workers reached an all-time high of 10.65 million in December 2011, a sign that employers are looking at the recent recession through a rear-view mirror.
The Texas Workforce Commission’s December 2011 employment statement reported Texas added more than 200,000 jobs in 2011. This restored the state to its pre-recession employment levels by replacing the remainder of the 427,600 jobs lost during late 2008 and throughout 2009. The two-year recovery to this point puts Texas well ahead of the national job market, which is finding it more difficult to regain jobs at the rate of Texas; just 30 percent of jobs shed nationally during the recession have been restored.