Austin is “hottest job market in the Country”

This headline from the Sunday edition of the Austin American Statesman sums up what is already known to those of us that live here.

If you want a job, come to the Austin area.  And of course, all those folks will need a place to live and that is where us providers of residential rentals will haul in the benefits as the owners of well maintained and well placed residential rentals.  Not only will the rentals make or assist in making the mortgage payment but our investment should, according to all of those that read the tea leaves, should continue to increase in value.  Case in point.  In May of 2019 one of our investor clients bought a home in Hutto listed for $205,000.  Currently a home of about the same size on the same street listed at $399,990.  I hope it sells!

Here are excepts from the article to back up the headline:

“Austin is still the hottest job market in the country, perhaps of any major metro area,” said Peter Rodriguez, dean of Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business. “It is hard to imagine a major metro market with the ability to run any hotter than Austin is right now. The unemployment rate in the Austin area has slipped below 3% for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began, coming in at 2.9% in December

Dirk Mateer, a University of Texas professor and economist, called the 2.9% rate for December “a great number” and said he thinks it could drop below 2.5% this year amid the intense demand for workers in the region, spurred by the growing presence of such major companies as Tesla, Apple, Samsung and Oracle, as well by the large number of other businesses that have been relocating here.

A jobless rate of below 2.5% “is about as (low) as you could ever expect an unemployment rate to go in a major metro area — that is full employment,” in which just about everyone who wants a job has one, Mateer said.

“But the trends are in place (to get that low again), and they don’t show any signs of abating,” he said

The unemployment rate in the Austin metro area, which includes Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell counties, registered 2.4% in December 2019, prior to the pandemic. It has improved significantly after shooting up to 11.8% in April 2020, when the shock of the coronavirus first slammed the economy statewide and nationally and triggered huge numbers of job cuts.

Rodriguez, of Rice University, said he expects the broad trends in Austin this year to be strong job growth and continued intense demand for workers, even if the ongoing pandemic and issues such as inflation present challenges for certain sectors.

“There is nothing in this (December) data that makes me fear at all the path of growth” for the Austin area, he said. “I would say the only thing likely to apply the brakes in Austin is just the speed at which it can add infrastructure, housing and the people needed to work those jobs.”

Overall, the December unemployment rate in the Austin area was the lowest among Texas’ major metro areas, according to the Dallas Fed, with the Dallas metro area second at a seasonally adjusted rate of 4.1%. The McAllen region in South Texas came in highest among the state’s major metro areas at 8.3%