I would suggest that unless you were on another planet, no consumer with access to a television, radio or the Internet could have escaped hearing their president, senators and their congressperson telling them the sky was falling. With the leadership of the nation – Republicans and Democrats alike – and every talking head in the media making clear hour after hour, day after day in the run-up to Aug. 2 that a financial disaster was lurking around the corner, it does not take much imagination to envision consumers deciding to forego or delay some discretionary expenditure they had planned. Instead, they might well be inclined to hunker down to weather the perfect storm they were being warned was rapidly approaching. Watching the drama as it unfolded, I could imagine consumers turning to each other in millions of households, saying: “Honey, we need to cancel that trip we were planning and that gizmo or service we wanted to buy. We better save more and spend less.” Small wonder that, following the somewhat encouraging retail activity reported in July, the Michigan survey measure of consumer sentiment released just recently had a distinctly sour tone. Importantly, from a business operator’s perspective, nothing was clarified, except that there will be undefined change in taxes, spending and subsidies and other fiscal incentives or disincentives. The message was simply that some combination of revenue enhancement and spending growth cutbacks will take place. The particulars are left to one’s imagination and the outcome of deliberations among 12 members of the Legislature.
Another way to calculate Texas’ contribution to job creation is to lop off those states that have continued losing jobs and consider only those that have positive growth in employment these past two years. Using this metric, Texas has accounted for 29.2 percent of job creation since the recession ended. These are the facts. You may select whichever metric you wish. Regardless, it is reasonable to assume Texas has accounted for a significant amount of the nation’s employment growth both over the past 20 years and since the recession officially ended. This raises the obvious question – what kind of jobs are being created in Texas? Here are two charts that might help you form an opinion. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  The first provides a breakdown of employment growth by sector since the recession ended, listing each employment sector by its weight in the employment mix of Texas. The most jobs have been created in the educational and health services sector, which accounts for 13.5 percent of Texas’ employment. The second-most jobs have been created in the professional and business services sector, which accounts for 12.5 percent of the Texas workforce. The mining sector, which includes support activities for both mining and oil and gas, employs 2.1 percent (yes, two-point-one percent) of Texas’ workers. In the second chart, you will see that these jobs are not low-paying jobs.