Austin, Dallas felt downturn most

[Ilsa]

http://www.statesman.com/asection/content/auto/epaper/editions/sunday/news_f384267b517911d400ec.html

Austin, Dallas felt downturn most
The two high-tech, high-wage cities lost thousands of jobs, billions in worker pay

snip

The data collected by the commission tell the tale of cities struggling with vast changes in income and employment from the final quarter of 2000 through the final quarter of 2002:

* The Austin metro area lost 35,679 private industry jobs, nearly 6.7 percent of the region's total private work force, from the end of 2000 to the end of 2002. The total private industry wages paid in Travis, Caldwell, Hays, Williamson and Bastrop counties during the last quarter of 2002 were $772 million lower than in the final quarter of 2000, a 12.8 percent drop in the final 13 weeks of 2000 compared with the same period in 2002. (All dollar figures in this story have been adjusted for inflation to reflect their worth in the last quarter of 2002.)

* Dallas, the state's largest economy, lost 112,474 private industry jobs, a 6.4 percent decline, and $2.2 billion in private industry wages, a drop of 10.3 percent.

* Houston lost 3 percent of its private industry wages, a $616 million decline. San Antonio managed to tread water in terms of total private industry wages.

I feel bad for anyone, individually, out of work. But I must confess to having a harder time mustering up sympathy for Dallas as a whole. These were not low wage jobs that went away. The decline in compensation in the double digits reflects this compared to the percentage of the number of jobs lost.

[hadrons]

1. and I wonder who they blame for this ....

Clinton, probably :eyes:

[bearfan454]

2. Especially Austin

Austin was the SouthWest Silicon Valley. These piece of sh!t employers now dropped their wages real low. My wife used to make 67,000 a year. Now $13.00 an hour and that is better than a lot of other people. God I hate these f*cking repukes !

[pansypoo53219]

3. Good

this is ALL their fault for re-electing the shrub when they shoulda KNOWN better, but then it is a SOUTHERN state full of NRA idiots(flame on texans-until you get your house in order, DON'T let any more assholes out of your state!).

oh, that felt good. now i can read the paper and get crazy again.

[silverlib]

4. Beg to differ

could be wrong, but I believe Travis County (Austin) voted for the winner in the last election.

...and my husband is one of the many drawing unemployment right now.

Glad YOU feel better! This state gave you Jim Hightower, Molly Ivans, Lyndon Johnson, and plenty more wonderful people who were really Texans -

[zoidberg]

9. Barbara Jordan, Lloyd Bentson, Ann Richards...

You Texas haters need to give it a rest.

[Frances]

5. I wish that we could find one group of people

in any country or any part of any country that were "all good." Unfortunately, there are bad apples in every culture.

[Code_Name_D]

6. And its worse than it looks.

These are "core" jobs that they lost. Austin & Dallas are not perticuley vary economicly diverse comunities, chosing to focuse of a few indestries such as corpreate hosting and oil. These layoff and wage cuts has a froufound ripple effect on the rest of the economey, frustrating their efforts to obsorbe the losses. It is why unemplyment is so painful in these areas. It hurts every one, even thoushe with jobs as demand for services drops becase a signifcent segment of the population can no longer afford them.

[mhr]

7. I Live in Dallas

and have been unemployed for three years now.

My salvation, deep savings!

I am a refugee from one of those 112,000 lost jobs.

Most of these jobs were in the Telecom sector and represent a real blow to the community because these were good paying, high skill posistions.

The tragedy is that the economy is not generating new jobs fast enough to absorb these folks.

[Code_Name_D]

8. Ah we are generating new job all right.

Just not here in Murica