County jobless rate continues to improve

Dalondo Moultrie The Seguin Gazette

With effects of COVID-19 on unemployment rates apparently in the rearview, Guadalupe County is outpacing the region and the country in the statistical category.

The county’s good fortunes likely can be attributed to multiple factors, said Adrian Lopez, chief executive officer at Workforce Solutions Alamo.

“It’s kind of a combination of things,” he said. “I think Guadalupe County continues to add jobs. People are going back to work at a faster rate than other parts of the state and the country.”

For April, the most recent month for which statistics are available, Guadalupe County’s unemployment rate improved by .2%. It dropped from 3.1% the previous month to 2.9% in April, according to data Workforce Solutions Alamo keeps.

By comparison, the United States’ unemployment for April sat at 3.6%, Texas held at 3.7% and the Alamo region — which includes Guadalupe, Atascosa, Bandera, Bexar, Comal, Frio, Gillespie, Karnes, Kendall, Kerr, McMullen, Medina and Wilson counties — recorded a rate of 3.3%.

Part of the combination of factors helping the local unemployment rate deals with an ability for employees to go to work, Lopez said.

“When we look at the number-one issue of why people are not going to work, it was pre-pandemic and post-pandemic. It’s an issue associated with child care,” he said. “Sometimes in the smaller communities, you may have informal systems of childcare. You have family or those types of things to be able to take care of your child while you’re at work.”

The city of Seguin’s unemployment rate ranked among the best for cities in the region. Seguin registered a rate of 3.0% for April.

Area cities of New Braunfels at 2.8% and Cibolo at 2.9% had better rates, but Converse at 4.0%, San Antonio at 3.3% and Schertz at 3.1% were slightly higher, according to Workforce Solutions Alamo data.

The region continues to add people who replace a significant number of prospective employees lost due to the pandemic, Lopez said. A good number of people aged 55 and older left the job market for various reasons when the coronavirus ravaged communities, he said.

But additional high school and college graduates have entered the labor market, along with other job seekers relocating from other areas, Lopez said.

“That’s a great sign because if you see that, you see the labor force growing and you don’t see the labor force shrinking like other parts of the state or country,” he said. “Those are really good signs.”

According to a recent statement released at the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics website, the country’s unemployment rate was unchanged from March to April, holding steady at 3.6%.

About 5.9 million people were unemployed nationally, the bureau wrote.

“These measures are little different from their values in February 2020 (3.5% and 5.7 million, respectively), prior to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic,” the bureau’s information read.

Guadalupe County is recording numbers at or below its pre-pandemic marks for the unemployment rate, Lopez said. Population growth is helping and that is partially a result of workers reevaluating their lives and finding what they want in places like Guadalupe County and the Alamo region, he said.

“People are moving around like crazy. I think that’s just part of the overall market,” Lopez said. “Salary obviously is a big deal. People took an opportunity to sort of rethink everything in their career. For Guadalupe County, it’s pretty phenomenal.”

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