Texas Owns It On Jobs-
Over at newgeography, there's a very cool interactive map showing job gains and losses by county, across various economic sectors.
Texas is undeniably a hot spot for jobs over the past five years:
The Texas skeptics often invoke high energy prices, as if Texas were some sheikdom next to Mexico. But according to the Dallas Fed study, energy jobs accounted for only 10.6% of the new positions. The state economy today is far more broadly based than it was before the early-1980s oil-and-gas bust. For the last nine years, Texas has led the states in exports.To put a finer point on it, the energy industry isn't expanding merely because of rising oil prices or new natural resources. Technological innovation is also driving the business, such as the horizontal drilling that has enabled shale oil and gas fracking. New ideas are how an economy expands.
Nearly 31% of the new Texas jobs are in health care, many of which are no doubt the product of federal entitlements that go to every state. But the state is also making progress filling in historical access gaps in west and south Texas and the panhandle, where Mr. Perry's 2003 malpractice caps have led to an influx of doctors, especially high-risk specialists. The Texas Public Policy Foundation estimates that the state has netted 26,000 new physicians in the wake of reform, most from out of state.
So, nationally, jobs are only really being created in the energy sector, it seems, yet just about one-tenth of the new jobs in Texas are oil and gas jobs. The job creation in Texas has been incredibly broad-based and centered around the private-sector. Indeed, there are fewer government jobs per capita in Texas now than when Rick Perry took office ten years ago.
Source: WILLisms
