Guadalupe County jobless rate continues to improve

Dalondo Moultrie The Seguin Gazette

For more than a year, the state of Texas and its employers have exhibited a knack for connecting job seekers with job providers.

The state has done so well that it realized job gains month over month for 14 consecutive months as of the Texas Workforce Commission’s December jobs data, Gov. Greg Abbott said recently. The state broke its all-time total high for jobs available in each of those 14 months, he said.

“Texas leads the nation in offering businesses the freedom to flourish and grow,” Abbott said. “Our skilled and growing workforce is a magnet for job creators. I am proud that we’ve again hit a new historic high for total jobs, putting even more Texans on the path to prosperity. We live in a state of infinite possibilities, and in the legislative session ahead, we will continue working together to keep Texas the land of opportunity.”

Notable December job gains in Texas included 12,700 jobs added in education and health services, 6,300 jobs added in financial activities and 5,500 jobs added in manufacturing.

On Jan. 20, Abbott said Texas Workforce Commission showed the state surpassed its all-time record for total jobs for the 14th consecutive month.

Employers added 29,500 confirm jobs in December and more than 650,000 over the year. Texas had 13,705,500 jobs at the end of 2022.

Seguin, Guadalupe County and the Texas Workforce Solutions Alamo region — which encompasses Guadalupe and 12 other counties — have performed similarly on the jobs front. All have managed to keep unemployment rates low, said Adrian Lopez, Workforce Solutions Alamo chief executive officer.

For December, Seguin’s unemployment rate sat at 3.2%, he said. Guadalupe County’s rate was 2.9% and the region recorded a 3.3% rate, Lopez said. The state of Texas’s unemployment rate was 3.6%, he said.

“It’s extremely low unemployment,” Lopez said. “That shows that people are getting back to work. Not only that, the labor force continues to grow.”

The growth is really a return to the way the economy performed before the onset of a sharp downturn due to the coronavirus pandemic, he said.

In February 2020, just before government-mandated closures and business shutdowns, Guadalupe County’s unemployment rate was 2.7%, Lopez said. Affects of the pandemic began showing in March, he said. By May 2020, the county’s unemployment rate was almost 11%, Lopez said.

“Things were good, then things went south,” he said. “Then after that, things have been kind of slowly going down. For all intents and purposes, the 2.9% today is pretty much the same as 2.7 if you consider the amount of folks who came into the labor force. The labor force grew but we still were at 2.9% unemployment.”

A few things contributed to Guadalupe County’s unemployment improvements, Lopez said.

The county saw tremendous growth in new home construction, he said. That brought jobs and people to fill the jobs, Lopez said.

Housing and construction are good indicators of a strong economy, he said.

“Compare that to other places, … if you look at other areas of the country, they’re not experiencing that boom,” Lopez said. “They may be adding jobs but they aren’t adding them at the speed that counties I serve in South Central Texas are. That growth is pretty phenomenal.”

Still, there are more jobs available and the Texas Workforce Commission is trying to help fill them, he said. He pointed to a regional job fair on Thursday that is slated to bring employers and prospective employees together to fill positions in Seguin, Cibolo and New Braunfels.

A similar fair scheduled for Feb. 21 is in the planning stages, Lopez said. The fairs host employers from many industries but there likely will be a focus on manufacturing, he said.

Prospective hires are gravitating to jobs in the field, Lopez said.

“Some of these employers in manufacturing have good paying jobs and benefits,” he said. “People are going into those jobs because they make good wages and don’t have to work two or three jobs and get benefits. They make enough to support their families.”

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