Texas unemployment surges in September

The Texas unemployment rate soared in September, climbing for the first time since April as job growth downshifted sharply.

Unemployment rose to 8.3 percent, up more than a percentage point from 7 percent in August, the Texas Workforce Commission reported Friday. Nationally, unemployment averaged 7.9 percent in September.

The pace of job growth, meanwhile, fell by more than half over the month. Employers added about 41,000 jobs, down from about 112,000 in August.

The weaker employement repord reflects a slowdown nationally as federal stimulus programs authorized by the CARES Act expire and Congress and the Trump administration remain unable to reach agreement on another round of relied spending. Meanwhile, the Texas Workforce Commission said this week that it will reinstate work search requirements for those receiving unemployement benefits

Ray Perryman, CEO of the Perryman Group, an economic consulting firm in Waco, said the slowdown is not unexpected given the initial surge in job gains when businesses reopened after coronavirus shutdowns were lifted in May. But, he added, further delays on a stimulus package as well as barriers to workers getting unemployment relied could derail the recovery

“The CARES Act, while certainly not perfect, helped to keep the basic structure of the economy together during the worst of the pandemic,” Perryman said. “Unfortunately, it was implicitly based on the presumption that the dislocations would only require assistance for two to three months.”

The Houston unemployment rate also surged in September, soaring to 9.6 percent from 7.6 percent in September, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Houston gained about 24,000 jobs last month, but the total number of payroll jobs in the region, just under 3 million, are still down about 5 percent from a year ago, according to government data.

Most of the local gains were attributed to the reopening of schools, not broader economic improvement, said Patrick Jankowski, the lead economist at the Greater Houston Partnership, a business-financed economic development group. Employers who able to retain workers through the federal small business loan program, the Paycheck Protection Program, are laying off workers as the money runs out, he said.

Originally Posted in: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/