Local jobless rate near 20-year low

Local employers need no reminders, but it’s only getting tougher in the Austin metro area to hire qualified workers.

Austin's unemployment rate fell to 2.3% last month, according to the Texas Workforce Commission, a level it last hit nearly two decades ago in December 2000. Meanwhile, a new study ranks Austin among the top five cities in the country for job seekers to back out of offers they'd already accepted because they received a better one.

"It's nuts right now," said John Gulnac, regional president for staffing firm Robert Half. "There is so much more demand (for workers in the Austin area) than there is supply, and there are (companies) willing to be in bidding wars for talent."

Gulnac said the unemployment rate in the metro area — which includes Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell counties — actually is more like 1% or below for people with high-tech skills or other professional credentials.

Robert Half, which helps businesses recruit employees, recently listed Austin behind only San Diego, San Francisco, Chicago and Houston in a survey of cities in which job seekers backpedal on job offers after accepting them. In Austin, nearly half the workers in the survey who did so said they received another offer they liked better, and a third said their current employers persuaded them to stay on by making quality counteroffers.

The overall jobless rate in the Austin metro area registered 2.7% in March this year and in April 2018, according to figures from the workforce commission that haven't been adjusted for seasonal factors. The last time the local jobless rate registered a nonadjusted 2.3% — which was during the dot-com boom — the region's civilian labor force numbered about 750,000 people, compared with more than 1.2 million today.

Statewide, the April unemployment rate came in at a seasonally adjusted 3.7%, tying a record low it hit in December and down from 3.8% in March and 4% in April 2018. The workforce commission doesn’t immediately adjust its metro level data for seasonal factors, but the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas released seasonally adjusted numbers for the Austin metro area Friday. Those numbers put the region’s unemployment rate last month at 2.5%, compared with 2.7% in March and 3% in April last year.

While Austin's extremely tight labor market is giving fits to businesses facing either bidding wars to fill open positions or the prospect of settling for unqualified applicants, it has been a beacon nationwide for people looking for work. Professional networking site LinkedIn recently pegged Austin as the top city in the United States in terms of attracting job seekers, based on an analysis of information posted by its users across the country.

The job market in Austin "has gone from good to great to amazing to, basically, there are no people left" so positions have to be filled by people moving into the region, said Guy Berger, LinkedIn's chief economist. "It's a super powerful magnet sucking talent from all over the country.”

Berger said he doesn't expect the trend to end anytime soon, because the Austin area has a diverse local economy with many types of skills in high demand, and because it's still considered affordable compared with other "elite professional cities" on the West Coast and East Coast.

"Austin is on the cutting edge technologically, and it's still affordable to live in — so it hits the sweet spot on both of those," said Berger, who is based in San Francisco.

Hiring in the metro area over the past 12 months was led by 8,200 new jobs in professional and business services, the industry category that includes most of the technology sector. Jobs in the category have climbed 4.5% since April 2018, bringing the region’s total to 191,500, according to the Texas Workforce Commission.

The employment sector that includes retail and wholesale trade — which tracks closely with population growth — added 3,800 new jobs over that time, a 2.1% increase that puts the total in the category at 180,700. The financial services category has added 2,800 jobs, or 4.5%, for a total of 64,800.

Overall, the April unemployment rate in the Austin area was the lowest among Texas’ major metro areas, according to the Dallas Fed, with the San Antonio-New Braunfels region in second place at a seasonally adjusted 2.9%. The McAllen region in South Texas came in highest among the state’s major metro areas, at 5.4%.

Gulnac, of staffing firm Robert Half, said his advice for companies trying to hire in the Austin metro area is to tailor job offers to individual applicants — by being willing to emphasize elements such as benefits and advancement opportunities in addition to a competitive salary — and then move quickly.

"The demand (for workers) is insane — these candidates are just getting multitudes of offers put in front of them," Gulnac said. "For companies to win at the offer stage, they really need to do a better job of identifying the key criteria for the candidate, and then make their best offer" that plays to them.