Affordable Austin

BusinessWeek published an article called Affordable Austin last week, detailing comparisons between Austin-Round Rock and a few of our peer regions like Portland and San Francisco. Here's a map showing where people came from who moved to Travis County in 2006. We generated the map using county-to-county migration records from the IRS. Click on the image for a larger version. We'll be getting the 2008 data as soon as it's available so stay tuned for an update on this topic. Also, check out a story we did last year on people moving to Austin from California.



Brian Kelsey

Unpacking Unemployment Data

Michael Mandel at BusinessWeek writes frequently about how different segments of the labor market--college-educated, people with high school diplomas, etc.--are faring in the recession we've experienced over the last 18 months. Check out his latest post called Which Educated Workers Are Unemployed? to get a sense for how this data can be used. We did a trial run using similar unemployment data for Travis County with Workforce Solutions Capital Area recently. Later this summer we'll be exploring ways to provide that information on a monthly basis.

New City Population Estimates Coming July 1st

The U.S. Census Bureau will be releasing new estimates for city populations on July 1st. The latest data will cover the July 2008 time period. We'll post the data here for the cities in the Capital Area, along with some analysis. Stay tuned.

Career Clusters

Seedco published an interesting report last month called A Tale of Two Systems: Linking Economic Development and Workforce Development. Promoting collaboration among economic development, workforce training, and education has been a cause du jour for some time, and I'm glad to see researchers weighing in with case studies of actual projects. Hopefully one day somebody will take a look at what's going on in Texas.

We tackle this challenge in a slightly different way. In addition to running committees that involve people from economic development, workforce development, and education, one of CAPCOG's primary roles is to create information--data sets, maps, presentations, this blog--that provide opportunities for collaboration. For example, we've partnered with Workforce Solutions Rural Capital Area to provide labor market information tied to Career Clusters, which form the basis of career and technical education programs in secondary schools. Here's a table showing the 16 federally-defined Career Clusters and the job outlook for the Capital Area between 2009 and 2014. Click on the image for a larger version (source: EMSI).



School districts can use this information in several ways: (1) to prioritize career and technical education course offerings based on regional labor market trends (e.g., which Career Clusters give our students the greatest opportunity to find a well-paying job in a growing field?); (2) to emphasize the connection between secondary education and workforce availability (which can be very helpful for encouraging businesses to offer internships, job shadowing, etc.; and (3) to help students understand career options after high school, regardless of whether or not they decide to pursue postsecondary education immediately.

Brian Kelsey

Yuppies, Burbs, and Hippies, Oh My!

Ben Philpott at KUT is talking market segmentation on his blog today. Visit Notes from the Lege to read about a new national research project called Patchwork Nation and then read CAPCOG's article on Central Texas called Yuppies, Burbs, and Hippies, Oh My!, by Sean Moran.

Austin-Round Rock Gained Jobs in April

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released preliminary April employment data for U.S. metro areas today. Total non-farm employment in Austin-Round Rock (Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays, Travis, and Williamson counties) increased from 776,500 jobs in March to 781,400 jobs in April. This marks the third consecutive month of net job growth in the region (not seasonally adjusted).

Notably, employment in goods producing industries in Austin-Round Rock was down by only 500 jobs in April, which is encouraging given the pace of recent losses. Other good news: consumer spending may be stabilizing (retail, hotel, and restaurant jobs are all up from this time last year) and professional and business service sector employment is back to its all-time high last seen in October 2008.

Some bad news: computer, semiconductor, and other electronic component manufacturing continues to slide. Semiconductor manufacturing employment in April was 15,700 jobs, which virtually erases all the gains since April 2006.

Brian Kelsey

Technology Regions

Ross DeVol discusses the Milken Institute's latest study of North America's High-Tech Economy over at Newgeography. This latest edition includes Mexico, which needs to be part of any discussion about the future of regional economies in Texas. Austin-Round Rock ranks 20th, and the authors call it "arguably the quintessential 21st-century knowledge-based community." No argument here.

Brian Kelsey