Ah Texas, oh Texas....
WSJ.com - Amid Solid Growth in Employment, Texas Seems Poised to Outperform the National Economy Texas, the nation's third-largest state economy, created 293,000 net jobs last year, its highest total since 1998, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The state's 3% job-growth rate was double that of the U.S. as a whole. And Dallas Fed economist Fiona Sigalla predicts the state will create jobs at a slightly faster pace this year than last.
I dislike making specious correlations, but I wonder, does “illegal” immigration have anything to do with these economic numbers? Texas is probably one of the states with the highest number of Mexican border-crossers.....hmmmmm.
But the low cost of living here is luring other companies to the state, economists say. Texas has no personal-income tax. From March 2000 though March 2006, as home prices doubled in some coastal areas, home prices rose just 31% in Texas. The median single-family home price today in Texas is just $139,000, compared with $217,000 for the U.S. as a whole.
The low cost of living could be a long-term advantage. Home-price appreciation in Texas is expected to outpace that of the rest of the country over the next couple of years. But Texas is unlikely to ever close the gap. Unlike California or the Northeast, Texas has few of the constraints that squeeze development and push up housing prices. Thousands of relatively affordable homes are being constructed each year on the fringes of the state's major cities.“We basically have an unlimited supply of land,” said Mark Dotzour, chief economist of the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University. “And we have a population that doesn't mind getting in their big pickup truck and driving a long ways to work each day.”
Don't know about that assertion. Unlimited supply of land, in West Texas where everyone waves at everyone because the population density is so sparse.
Tags: Austin, /immigration
