Dallas Fed report: Recession has landed full force in Texas
March 16, 2009
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.
Written by Staff, The Austin American Statesman
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.
Fair Use Notice
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use", you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.