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• ​​Texas added over 30,000 jobs in March, an almost 0.23 percentage point increase over February. Over the same period, Texas trailed the national growth rate by 6 basis points.
  
• Texas has one of only a handful of state economies that has recovered jobs lost during the pandemic. The Texas economy has been exceeding the March 2020 pre-pandemic employment level since November 2021.
• In March, the state's unemployment rate improved to 4.4 percent. While that's still higher than the national unemployment rate of 3.6 percent, Texas' labor force has been much more robust throughout the pandemic. Both are still above the pre-pandemic rates of 3.5 percent.
• The states' labor force expanded by almost 41,000 for the second month in a row ending in March. The 0.28 percent growth rate in Texas for both February and March was higher than the 0.19 and 0.25 percent increases posted nationally over the same period.
• The most recent job-opening data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics signaled a slowdown in job creation. The February count of job openings was 932,000, which is still well above the pre-pandemic level by a margin of over 300,000 jobs. Despite a slowdown in momentum, the mismatches between employment and job-opening growth still contributes to the current rapid wage rate growth.
• Childcare, the lingering pandemic, early retirement, and the possibility people are rethinking their career paths could be affecting the transition from unemployment to employment.
• The March Texas labor force participation rate remained at 63.4 percent and is still higher than the national rate of 62.4 percent. Labor force participation has been higher in Texas since May 2020 but began to falter in July 2021, likely because of the rampup of Delta variant cases. March 2022 is still below the June 2021 post-COVID peak of 63.5 percent.
• The state's goods-producing sector added almost 14,700 jobs in March 2022. Manufacturing employment led the pack with an additional 5,600 employees followed by mining/logging (4,700) and construction (4,400).
• The state's service-providing sector added a little over 15,400 jobs in March, well below the jobs gained the prior two months. Unlike in the previous month, both trade, transportation, and utilities (-300) and professional and business services (-3,000) pushed down the job growth rate. Retail job brought down the former while administrative jobs dragged down the latter. Both could be due to lingering uncertainty brought on by the Omicron COVID variant.
• Industry sectors that still haven't recovered from the pandemic include educational and health services (1,400 jobs below pre-pandemic levels) and leisure and hospitality (13,400 fewer jobs). In the former, education services has actually recovered while healthcare has not.
  

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Previous reports available: ​

2022: January​, March, April
2021: January, February​, March​, April, May, June​, July​, August​, September, October, November, December​