In January 28,000 Texas jobs were created. Despite this, the state unemployment rate continued to rise. Over the past 12 months, Texas employers created over 277,200 jobs, giving the state an annual job growth rate of 2.7 percent, according to recent Texas Workforce Commission statistics.

While Texas employers continue to create new area jobs, the rest of the country experienced a reduction in available positions. This was the first such decrease in available jobs since 2003. Many believe this to be a strong signal that national economy was slowing down and that a possible recession could be on its way.

January’s increase in available Texas jobs followed December’s gain of 21,400 jobs. Despite the growing number of positions, unemployment increased slightly to 4.3 percent from December’s 4.2 percent. Although the jobless rate did rise, it was still down from the previous year’s 4.5 percent and lower than the nation’s unemployment rate of 4.9 percent.

The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan area’s unemployment rate jumped from 4.2 percent in December to 4.6 percent in January. These figures were also slightly lower than that of the previous year when the area had a jobless rate of 4.7 percent.

The Midland metro area, where only 2.9 percent of residents were unable to find jobs, had the lowest unemployment rate in the state. On the other side of the scale, the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission area had the highest unemployment rate of 7.3 percent.

Texas Workforce Commissioner Ron Lehman said that “ in the last 12 months, the state’s annual growth rate climbed to 2.7 percent, compared to the national growth rate of 0.6 percent.”

Popularity: 70% [?]