Texas unemployment remains high, 7.2%

Now 10 months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the Texas’ unemployment rate stays near Great Recessionlevel highs.

The unemployment rate in Texas decreased to 7.2 percent in December, more than double the rate of 3.5 percent a year earlier.

Locally, the Castro County unemployment rate is at 4.1 percent.

Across the state, business shutdowns and restrictions on operations through the pandemic have battered Texas companies, which are now grappling with the recent surge in infections as intensive care units at dozens of hospitals are at capacity.

Entire industries — bars and restaurants, tourism and travel, oil and gas — continue to struggle.

Hungry and homeless Texans remain about t in limbo waiting for more federal coronavirus relief while the state’s understaffed unemployment insurance office has left countless Texans struggling to receive unemployment benefits as they navigate the Texas Workforce Commission’s processes.

A decline in Texas’ sales tax revenues — the largest source of funding for the state budget — has created a shortfall that lawmakers will have to fill during the 2021 legislative session. Economists say weakened global demand for oil, high unemployment and the ongoing public health crisis will continue to weigh down Texas’ economic recovery.

According to a Texas Workforce Commission report released Jan. 22, Texas’ unemployment rate in December was 7.2 percent — a decrease from the 8.1 percent November jobless rate.

The state's unemployment rate for December is the latest indicator that the economic recovery in Texas will be slow and staggered.

Joblessness is the worst in South Texas’ Starr County, where many people work in oil fields. The county recorded an 18.5 percent unemployment rate. The Odessa area in the Permian Basin suffered the largest collapse of jobs in any metro area in the state from December 2019 to December 2020. Midland 8.1%

Unemployment in Austin’s Travis County is at 5.1 percent , the lowest rate among Texas’ most populous urban counties. A handful of rural counties throughout the state are seeing unemployment rates below 3 percent.

With the unemployment situation came a sales tax revenue drop in December. Texas collected $2.9 billion in sales tax revenues, down 5 percent from what the state collected in December 2019.

Those revenues came mostly from purchases made in November, when key coronavirus metrics surpassed records set over the summer and Gov. Greg Abbott ruled out any new statewide business restrictions.

The total revenue for October, November and December was down 5 percent compared with the same period in 2019, according to Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar.