Recession Impacts on Workers by Age Group in Austin-Round Rock

Thanks to the hard work of folks at the Texas Workforce Commission and the U.S. Census Bureau, we now have a full year of recession data for Austin-Round Rock in the Quarterly Workforce Indicators program. This is noteworthy because it allows us to take a look at how the first year of the recession (2007Q4 to 2008Q4) impacted workers by age group.

Most local economists and the media have noted that Austin-Round Rock came to the recession later than most other places in the U.S., and this new data tells a similar story. You can see in the charts below that job growth ranged from 1.0% to 2.1% between 2007Q4 and 2008Q4 for workers age 25 to 54, and workers age 55+ made even larger gains. You can also see the impacts of people dialing back on consumer expenditures for restaurants, retail, and other types of businesses where younger workers are concentrated. Year-to-year job growth for workers age 14 to 21 dipped into negative territory in 2008Q4 for the first time since Austin-Round Rock was struggling to get out of the last recession in 2002-2003.

These numbers will likely take a turn for the worse when 2009Q1 data is released, but I’m surprised that we didn’t see larger losses in 2008, particularly in the younger end of the labor market. We’ll send out an update when the 2009 data starts coming out.



Click on the image to enlarge it.



Brian Kelsey