Skip to main content
News Releases

Dallas Fed: Texas adds 46,700 jobs in August; state employment forecast rises to 2.8 percent for 2018

For Immediate Release: September 21, 2018

DALLAS—Texas added 46,700 jobs in August, according to seasonally adjusted and benchmarked payroll employment numbers released today by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

The state added a revised 10,600 jobs in July. That brings the year-to-date annualized growth rate to 3.0 percent.

Incorporating August employment growth of 4.6 percent and new leading index data, the Texas Employment Forecast suggests jobs will grow 2.8 percent this year (December/December), with an 80 percent confidence band of 2.3 to 3.3 percent. Based on the forecast, 340,600 jobs will be added in the state this year, and employment in December 2018 will be 12.7 million.

The forecast is up slightly from the Bank’s estimate of 2.7 percent growth released last month.

“After incorporating recently released data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, Texas job growth for the first quarter of 2018 was revised down from 3.6 to 2.8 percent,” said Keith R. Phillips, Dallas Fed assistant vice president and senior economist. “Even with the downward revision, Texas jobs grew at a strong 3.1 percent annualized pace in the first half of the year. Over the past two months, jobs have decelerated slightly, growing at a pace of 2.8 percent.”

Unemployment rates were mixed in the nine major Texas metro areas in August, with Austin–Round Rock and San Antonio–New Braunfels ticking up and Brownsville–Harlingen, Houston and McAllen–Edinburg–Mission ticking down, according to seasonally adjusted numbers from the Dallas Fed.

The Dallas Fed improves Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) payroll employment estimates for Texas by incorporating preliminary benchmarks into the data in a more timely manner and by using a two-step seasonal-adjustment technique. Texas metropolitan-area unemployment rates from the BLS also are seasonally adjusted by the Dallas Fed.

The Dallas Fed releases its Texas Employment Forecast on a monthly basis in conjunction with the release of monthly Texas employment data. The forecast projects job growth for the calendar year and is estimated as the 12-month change in payroll employment from December to December. For information on the methodology for the Bank’s Texas Employment Forecast, visit the Dallas Fed’s website.

-30-

Media contact:
James Hoard
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
Phone: (214) 922-5307
E-mail: james.hoard@dal.frb.org