Texas Not Immune to Global Economic Slump
Dallas Fed report: Recession has landed full force in Texas
By American-Statesman staff | Monday, March 16, 2009, 10:39 AM
Texas’ economy started losing steam in late 2008, and now has joined the rest of the country in a full-blown recession, according to a new report from the Dallas Federal Reserve.
The state was, fortunately, late to the party: The national recession started in December 2007. It took another six months before Texas’ economy began to slow down, the report said.
Key indicators, including job growth, exports, and various manufacturing indexes all fell in the second half of the year, the report said.
Among the state’s biggest cities, Austin and Dallas have slowed the most in recent months, while Houston continued to grow.
That’s because the Austin and Dallas economies have relatively higher exposure to a larger number of very cyclical sectors that are being hit by the recession than Houston or San Antonio do.
In Austin, that includes construction, information services, wholesale trade and real estate.
Dallas has higher exposure to a range of financial services industries, such as banking and insurance, as well as real estate.
The Fed report says that the state will lose a total of 269,000 jobs this year, a 2.8 percent decline, compared to 0.4 job growth in 2008.
If there’s any bright spot, the report says that the job losses will be the worst in the first half of this year, and then ease up starting in June.
Gresswete
Apr 10