AUSTIN – Texas added 75,100 nonfarm jobs in November, reaching nearly 13 million jobs, according to the Texas Workforce Commission.
With the jobs gained last month, the Texas economy has recovered all jobs lost because of the pandemic and is now 28,200 jobs above the February 2020 employment level of nearly 13 million.
It took Texas 19 months to recover lost jobs. The state’s labor force participation rate remains below pre-pandemic levels.
The state’s job growth was 0.6 percent last month, exceeding the Texas Real Estate Research Center’s forecasted growth rate of 0.4 percent.
The state’s labor market is recovering faster than the nation’s job market, which grew 0.1 percent over the month.
Texas’ seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in November was 5.2 percent, down 0.2 percentage points from October and higher than the national unemployment rate of 4.2 percent.
Amarillo had the lowest nonseasonally adjusted unemployment rate in the state at 3.1 percent. McAllen-Edinburg-Mission had the highest at 7.7 percent.
All employment sectors had seasonally adjusted job gains since November 2020. Mining and logging saw the largest annual growth in October at 17.4 percent, followed by professional and business services (11.3 percent) and leisure and hospitality (11.1 percent).
The Texas Real Estate Research Center has a wealth of economic information online for free.