Service sector buoys Texas job picture

Texas employers hired more than they fired for the 11th straight month in February, a sign of continued resistance to the economic strains of low crude oil prices and the high dollar, data released by the Texas Workforce Commission and Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas showed Friday.

With service-sector job gains buffering losses in oil and gas and other parts of the goods-producing sector, the state came out with a net positive of 2,100 seasonally adjusted nonfarm jobs. The statewide unemployment rate dropped to a seasonally adjusted 4.4 percent, from 4.5 percent in January. The national unemployment rate was 4.9 percent.

"It was job gains over job losses by a nose," said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst with Bankrate.com, adding that "2,100 jobs added for a state as large of the state of Texas is probably statistically insignificant, but it's obviously not insignificant for the people that have found work."

The addition of 21,000 service-sector jobs in Texas eclipsed the nearly 19,000 jobs lost in the production sector. According to the Texas Workforce Commission, 6,600 pink slips were issued in the mining and logging sector, which takes in oil and gas; 5,300 in construction; and 6,800 in manufacturing.

Hamrick said Texas' stronger service sector was "not unlike the national picture."

"Obviously, it's not a surprise that we continue to see problems for the energy sector," he said. "We can hope that the recent recovery -- modest recovery -- in crude oil prices may be a sign of at least stabilization, but we know that predicting the direction of oil prices is very difficult indeed."

Crude oil prices rose above $40 a barrel on March 17 but have slipped since then. It ended the week at $39.46 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

According to Keith Phillips, the Dallas Fed's assistant vice president and senior economist, statewide job growth for the first two months of 2016 cooled slightly to an annualized pace of 1.4 percent, down from 1.5 percent for 2015.

The bank revised its 2016 employment forecast to a 0.7 percent growth rate, down from the 0.9 percent growth rate predicted earlier in March.

"Declines in energy prices early this year and the continued strength in the dollar loom large on recent and future growth in the Texas economy," Phillips said.

The San Antonio region's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate held at 3.6 percent for February.

Phillips said low gas prices and a warm winter have encouraged people to go out and play rather than shop, making for a booming leisure and hospitality sector in San Antonio. He said the sector for the first two months of 2016 grew at a strong 10.5 percent. The overall annual job growth rate for the region was 2.9 percent, up from 2.7 percent for 2015.

"Hotels, places like movie theaters, appear to be getting more positive impact from lower gasoline fuel prices than retail spending," he said. "Employment in retail activity is actually down slightly."

According to Workforce Solutions Alamo, which releases job data that is not adjusted for seasonal factors such as holiday hiring and summer vacations, leisure and hospitality saw 2,000 new hires in February. Professional and business services, which includes fields such as accounting, tax preparation, computer systems design and advertising, also added 2,000 jobs. The trade, transportation and utilities sector, which includes retail jobs, cut 400 positions.

Mining and logging shed 200 jobs.

lbrezosky@express-news.net

Visit the San Antonio Express-News at www.mysanantonio.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.