The hiring rush is still continuing.
Despite rising interest rates and a wave of high-profile layoffs in the tech industry, the Dallas-Fort Worth job market continues to expand at a strong pace. The region added 16,900 jobs in January, the most since October, driven largely by a surge in healthcare worker hiring.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, D-FW added nearly 226,000 jobs in the 12 months ending in January, about twice the average annual increase before the pandemic.
This was a 5.7% increase, the highest among the most populous metropolises, and significantly higher than the U.S. growth rate of 3.3% over the same period.
“The labor market has been much more resilient than people expected,” said Mallory Vachon, senior economist at Labor IQ, a Dallas-based software services company focused on employment and payroll. “The overall volume and net jobs added have been amazing. Of course, there's still a lot of demand.”
Texas added 48,600 jobs in January, setting a new employment record for the state for the 16th consecutive month. These numbers, combined with recent upward revisions, were so strong that the Dallas Fed doubled its full-year job growth forecast just a month after releasing its original forecast.
In early February, the Dallas Fed predicted that job growth in Texas would slow to 1.4% in 2023, adding 193,000 jobs to the state. Currently, the Dallas Fed expects Texas to grow 2.8% this year and add 380,000 jobs.
Texas had just over 1 million job openings in December, and has remained at that level for several months. In February 2020, just before the pandemic, there were 531,000 job openings in the state.
At the same time, unemployment remains near historic lows. The Dallas-Plano-Irving metro sector's unemployment rate was 3.5% in January, and the Fort Worth-Arlington metro sector's unemployment rate was 3.6%. For background, the long-term average unemployment rate in the United States over several decades is 5.7%.
In Texas, there are nearly two job openings for every unemployed person in the workforce.
More signs of a tight job market: According to this month's Federal Reserve Beige Book, one health care company is increasing education and licensure requirements for hundreds of job openings to expand applicant pools. announced that it would lower the
Some school districts have reduced to four-day weeks as part of their response to staffing shortages, and airlines said pilot staffing issues are limiting their ability to operate, Beige Book said.
“Workforce shortages remain one of health care's biggest challenges,” said Stephen Love, CEO of the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council, whose membership includes dozens of hospitals in the region. said.
He is particularly encouraged by the recent increase in healthcare jobs in the region. In the 12 months ending in January, Dallas-Fort Worth added 32,400 jobs in health care and social assistance, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This was the largest year-on-year increase outside of the immediate recovery following the 2020 pandemic lockdown. Growth for the year was 8.2%, easily outpacing the growth rate for all nonfarm employment and most other sectors.
The healthcare industry was slow to recover from the pandemic as many patients postponed routine treatments and tests to avoid the risk of infection. But those working on payroll faced unusual stress while dealing with COVID-19 patients.
“During the pandemic, we had a significant number of resignations because people got burnt out,” Love said. “They were frustrated and very tough.”
Hospitals lost many employees who became traveling nurses to work on the front lines of the pandemic, resulting in significant pay increases. Texas officials responded to the coronavirus health emergency by providing 26,000 paramedical jobs.
The statewide program ended nearly a year ago and immediately began accelerating the hiring of health care workers.
Last month, Love met with human resources and nursing leaders at local hospitals, mostly focused on staffing. Many hospitals are looking for more than just general nurses, he said. They need radiology technicians, respiratory therapists, surgical, emergency medicine, and labor and delivery nurse specialists.
Despite the hiring gains over the past year, “we still face significant staffing issues here in North Texas,” Love said.
Another indicator of the limited supply of health care workers is that the national hospital unemployment rate was just 1.4% in February, according to government data.
Some large-scale layoffs have garnered national attention, such as this week's 10,000 layoffs by Facebook's parent company Meta, which follows Meta's 11,000 layoffs in November. This follows the announcement of According to LaborIQ, the number of layoffs over the past two years has generally been well below trend, but the company expects these numbers to increase to more normal levels in his 2023.
Some industries, such as mortgages and banking, have been affected by rising interest rates, while the technology sector is grappling with a post-pandemic economic slowdown.
“But those people don't seem to stay unemployed for long,” Vachon said.
For many people, the duration of unemployment has been shortened. As of February, 31% of unemployed people took more than 15 weeks to find a job. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 38% took that long a year ago.
“We had assumed that we would have more applicants after we instituted a $15 per hour minimum wage,” food manufacturers told the Dallas Fed in January. “That was not the case. We are still working to fill positions that have been vacant for months.”
In the same January survey by the Dallas Fed, half of business owners said they were trying to hire or fire employees, and 60% said they were experiencing a talent shortage.
LaborIQ predicts that two key indicators, payrolls and separations, will return to more normal ranges this year. However, the number of job openings is expected to increase by about 40% compared to pre-pandemic levels. This will keep the labor market strong, especially in Austin, Dallas, and Houston. LaborIQ ranks the top 150 markets for workers, with the Texas metro taking the top three spots, followed by Tampa and Phoenix.
“Job numbers remain high,” Vachon said.
He said small businesses that struggled to hire during the pandemic remain eager to add staff, while others are reluctant to cut staff.
“We're probably about 15% overstaffed right now,” one textile manufacturer told the Dallas Fed. “but [we] Employees have not responded to layoffs or reduced business hours because they do not know whether the situation will improve. ”
