County jobless rate better than state average

 Dalondo Moultrie The Seguin Gazette

Texas’ economy is faring a bit worse than the nation, and the Workforce Solutions Alamo area, which includes Guadalupe County, is doing about the same as the United States.

Guadalupe County by itself has a less bleak unemployment rate than the nation, state and region, Workforce Solutions Alamo CEO Adrian Lopez said. With Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s recent announcement lifting the state’s mask mandate and most COVID-19 restrictions, it remains to be seen how employment numbers will change, Lopez said.

“Obviously, the governor announced [Tuesday] the full reopening,” he said. “There’s some mixed messaging in terms of what that means for local folks and what that means for businesses. There’s probably a lot of decisions businesses will be making about whether it’s convenient for them to open 100%.

“We’ll track the affects of what that’s going to be long-term.”

Abbott’s decree goes into effect Wednesday. Lopez took a look at the local economic picture this past Wednesday and compared it to the national picture.

In January, the unemployment rate fell nationally by 0.4% to 6.3%, according to the United States Bureau of Labor and Statistics.

“The labor market continued to reflect the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and efforts to contain it,” read a statement on the Bureau of Labor and Statistics website. “In January, notable job gains in professional and business services and in both public and private education were offset by losses in leisure and hospitality, in retail trade, in health care, and in transportation and warehousing.”

In Texas, the unemployment rate was 7.1% for January, Lopez said. Guadalupe County’s unemployment rate was about 5.4%, and the 13-county region Workforce Solutions Alamo encompasses sat at about 6.4% unemployment for January, the most recent month for which he had statistics, Lopez said.

“We’re slightly lower than Texas,” he said. “For Guadalupe County, it’s almost two points below Texas. That’s good news.”

Though unemployment numbers still remain higher than they were before the pandemic, there still are jobs available in the county and the region, Lopez said.

Work is available in healthcare, information technology and cybersecurity, and manufacturing jobs are still being added in the county.

Much more still is needed to return to where the economy once was, Lopez said.

“We lost 350,000 jobs,” he said. “We haven’t produced 350,000 jobs. That’s going to take some time.”

Part of the issue is where the major job losses have occurred, Lopez said. In Guadalupe County and the region, a large swath of employment opportunities have disappeared in areas such as hospitality, accommodations and food services, he said.

Abbott’s recent announcement could drive a return to those jobs, but the final answer is hard to determine at the moment, Lopez said.

“I don’t know, I was watching some of the news coverage last night and looking at reaction of some business owners,” he said. “Some of them were saying ‘we’re not sure we want to take that risk at this moment.’”

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