It’s a start. At least, I hope it’s a start.
A surge in temporary federal Census Bureau jobs coupled with new leisure and hospitality positions helped local employers create 20,200 new jobs during May.
The data, released Friday by the Texas Workforce Commission, marks the biggest one-month April to May increase of the past decade, said Joel Wagher, labor market analyst for Workforce Solutions, which manages job services and training for the 13-county Houston-Galveston Gulf Coast region.
Nearly half of the increase — 47 percent – stems from the temporary census workers, he said. While those government jobs eventually will disappear, Wagher noted that 22 percent of the new positions were in restaurants, hotels and entertainment venues – a sector that typically doesn’t grow this early in the year or so robustly during slow economic times.
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In another positive sign Friday, the state reported that fewer Houston-area residents filed initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits.
In May, 20,893 local residents filed initial claims, according to data compiled by the Texas Workforce Commission. That represents an 8.5 percent drop from the previous month.
And last month’s claims were down almost 20 percent from May 2009, when 26,095 area residents filed unemployment claims.
With fewer people on the unemployment rolls, the Houston area unemployment rate dipped to 8.3 percent in May, the Texas Workforce Commission reported.
Given all the Census-related jobs in this report, we’ll have to see if this is an aberration or the beginning of a trend. One hopes this will also lead to an uptick in sales tax revenues. That won’t make the state or local budget deficits noticeably better, but it can prevent them from getting any worse.