The state’s unemployment rate drops below 4%

WACO, Texas (KWTX) - More jobs are on the rise in the state, reports show Texas led the country in job growth last year.

These employment opportunities caused the unemployment rate to drop below four percent since the pandemic.

The Workforce Solutions for the Heart of Texas’s career fair is packed with job seekers like Paige Baker ready to work.

“Having something like this in a big, and an open forum is really good because people get to come out, see other people’s faces and see how they care about people,” said Baker.

The career fair offers 1,200 job opportunities from a variety of companies.

“I think it tailors to everybody and everybody’s background, that’s what I like about this job fair,” said Baker.

This reinforces the fact that the state led the country in job opportunities last year, which dropped the unemployment rate to 3.9 percent.

“When you average over 50,000 jobs a month, that’s incredible. We led the country in both number of jobs and percentage growth. It’s very hard for a state to lead in percentage terms,” said Ray Perryman, president of the Ray Perryman Group Economic Research Company.

Perryman said a few factors play into the job growth.

He said companies expanded and started locating in Texas, the oil and gas surge created more jobs and the hospitality specter increased.

“It basically says that we have full employment in Texas, and we almost have a million job openings in Texas. I think we’ll continue to see good, strong positive growth for the foreseeable future,” said Perryman.

Perryman said he doesn’t think the data will affect the Federal Reserve, especially since it’s trying to cool off the economy.

“What we’re probably looking at is a couple of small interest rate increases to make sure inflation is under control. it’s already coming down significantly, i think most of the big rate increases are behind us,” said Perryman.

So, if you’re looking for a new job like baker, experts say you’re in the right state for one.

“I think that we are very grateful we’re in a state, in an area, with so much economic activity,” said Perryman.

Reports said between December of 2021 and 2022, state employers added more than 650-thousand nonfarm payroll jobs.

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