Texas Employment Forecast (December 11)

Texas Employment Forecast

The Texas Employment Forecast indicates jobs will increase 0.9 percent in 2025, with an 80 percent confidence band of 0.7 to 1.1 percent. The forecast is based on an average of four models that include projected U.S. gross domestic product, oil futures prices and the Texas and U.S. leading indexes. The forecast implies 125,400 jobs will be added in Texas this year and employment in December 2025 will be 14.4 million (Chart 1). Growth in the fourth quarter of the year is expected to be 1.0 percent.

Texas employment fell an annualized 1.1 percent in September, down 12,700 jobs. Additionally, August employment growth was revised down to 2.8 percent.

"Texas employment growth is weakening. Year-to-date job growth is 0.9 percent, which is well below the state's long-term trend of 2.0 percent," said Luis Torres, Dallas Fed senior business economist. "September job losses were observed across the board. Professional and business services and financial services led the decline in state employment followed by losses in manufacturing, oil and gas and information services. The government sector stands out as the only sector registering strength. San Antonio had the worst job losses among major Texas metros, while employment increased in Houston and was flat in Dallas. In contrast, El Paso recorded strong job gains," he added.

The Texas Leading Index decreased slightly over the three months through September (Chart 2). Changes in the components were mixed. Increases in new unemployment claims and decreases in the U.S. leading index, average weekly hours and well permits dragged the index down. Increases in the help wanted index, Texas stock index and oil price and a decrease in the Texas value of the dollar were positive contributors.

Due to the unavailability of data from agencies affected by the federal government shutdown, the Dallas Fed's Texas employment forecasts are delayed. Upcoming forecasts will be published in accordance with revised release schedules. The next forecast will include data through November and is expected on Jan. 7, 2026.

Next release: January 7, 2026

Methodology

The Dallas Fed's Texas Employment Forecast projects job growth for the calendar year and is estimated as the 12-month change in payroll employment from December to December.

The forecast is based on the average of four models. Three models are vector autoregressions for which Texas payroll employment is regressed on the lags of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil prices, the U.S. leading index and the Texas Leading Index. The fourth model is an autoregressive distributed lag model with regression of payroll employment on lags of payroll employment, current and lagged values of U.S. GDP growth and WTI oil prices, and Texas COVID-19 hospitalizations through March 2023. Forecasts of Texas payroll employment from this model also use forecasts of U.S. GDP growth from Blue Chip Economic Indicators and WTI oil price futures as inputs. All models include four COVID-19 dummy variables (March-June 2020).

For additional details, see dallasfed.org/research/forecast/.