Trend is good news for workers seeking new jobs after recent layoffs

Despite a rash of layoff announcements in the Austin metro over the past couple of months, new unemployment statistics indicate the region’s jobless rate actually fell in April.

Unemployment came in at 3% last month, down from 3.5% in March and only slightly higher than 2.9% a year ago, according to figures from the Texas Workforce Commission that haven’t been adjusted for seasonal factors.

A jobless rate of 3% or below is widely considered “full employment” by economists, or the point at which most people who want a job have one. Anything below that, and experts start to worry about a market not having an adequate workforce. Economists largely agree that a healthy unemployment rate is between 3% and 5%.

The unemployment rate for Texas and the nation stands at 3.5%.

The new number for Austin doesn’t reflect recent layoff announcements — such as the nearly 2,700 workers let go at Tesla Inc.’s Travis County factory in mid-April, the biggest single round of job cuts in the Austin metro in at least four decades — because of a lag between such announcements and when they show up in unemployment figures.

But it is the latest evidence of an extremely tight local labor market leading up to the cuts, which had many businesses in the Austin metro hard-pressed to find enough workers. That’s likely to equate to new employment opportunities for at least some of the people who have recently lost jobs in the region because of corporate downsizing, even if it doesn’t make the experience of getting laid off any less gut-wrenching for them.

“I can’t think of a better labor market to be in” than Austin for a person seeking a job, said John Boyd Jr., principal of corporate site selection firm The Boyd Co., speaking late last month about the Tesla layoffs. “Tesla gigafactory employees are really at a premium for higher-growth industries in cybersecurity, semiconductors — think about Samsung’s massive expansion (in Taylor) — the energy industry” and others.

Still, there’s no doubt that there has been a profusion lately of layoff announcements by companies with Austin operations. The impact on the local economy, and the local unemployment rate, will bear watching as a result.

Earlier this week, streaming viral video startup Atmosphere and job search company Indeed Inc. announced they were laying off a large number of employees, although the impact on Indeed’s Austin workforce is unclear. And in the past month or two, several other companies have announced cuts, in addition to Tesla. They include game maker Arkane Studios, Expedia Group Inc. and Rooster Teeth.

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Written by Bob Sechler for the Austin Business Journal