Houston Republic

The Houston area, which has previously lagged only slightly behind the nation in unemployment, has taken a much harder hit than the national average, with 8% unemployment to end December, compared to 6.5% nationwide.

Unemployment was highest in December in Galveston County at 8.3%, according to a Houston Area Economic Summary from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Fort Bend and Montgomery counties fared the best with 7.4% unemployment in both communities, leaving Harris County pulling up the average with 8.1%.

Between December 2019 and December 2020, despite a gradual but steady recovery for the Houston area, every single sector surveyed by the BLS was down a significant number of jobs compared to a year prior.

While leisure and hospitality had the highest number of lost jobs at approximately 36,300 compared to a year prior, construction was not far behind in terms of the percentage of jobs lost, with 24,500 fewer jobs in the sector, or a 10.1% loss, compared to a 10.9% loss for leisure and hospitality.

Manufacturing was still down 21,800 jobs – a 9.3% drop compared to a year prior – and mining and logging was still missing 14,000 jobs – a 17.8% drop, according to the BLS summary.

The information sector faired the best, and was down only 2,800 jobs, an 8.6% drop.

While employment suffered, Houston area residents fared somewhat better than other city dwellers around the country in terms of what they could buy with their dollars. While the nationwide average food cost for city dwellers rose 3.9% between December 2019 and December 2020, in the Houston area the cost of food rose 3%.

At the same time, Houston area residents did not see as much of a drop in energy prices as the rest of the country, with the national average for cities falling 7%, compared to a drop in price of 3.8% for the Houston area.