TEXAS POPULATION GROWING
Real Estate Center economists have been saying it for the past few years, and now the latest census data are supporting it: Texas is on the verge of a population boom.
“Today, one out of 12 Americans live in Texas — the same proportion that lived in New York City in 1930,” wrote Michael Barone recently in the Wall Street Journal.
“Metropolitan Dallas and metropolitan Houston, with about six million people each, threathen to overtake our fourth-largest metro area, San Francisco Bay (population about seven million), in the next decade,” he said.
Barone, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was comparing census data from the past eight decades.
Initial census numbers last month were necessary so states could know how many congressional districts they would have. Texas picked up four additional districts.
TEXAS ECONOMY GROWING
The Texas economy gained 231,700 jobs from December 2009 to December 2010, an annual growth rate of 2.3 percent, according to the Real Estate Center’s Monthly Review of the Texas Economy.
U.S, nonfarm employment rose 0.8 percent over the same period.
The state’s private sector posted an annual employment growth rate of 2.7 percent compared with 1.2 percent for the U.S private sector from December 2009 to December 2010.
Texas’ seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 8.3 percent in December 2010. up from 8.2 percent in December 2009, while the nation’s rate decreased from 9.9 to 9.4 percent over the same period.
All Texas industries except trade and information had more jobs in December 2010 than in December 2009. All Texas metro areas had more jobs in December 2010 than in December 2009. The state’s actual unemployment rate in December 2010 was 8 percent.