Texas unemployment rate hits worst on record at 12.8%

[TexasTowelie]

by Mitchell Ferman, Texas Tribune


The state’s April jobless rate was 12.8% — Texas’ worst monthly tally on record.

That number, included in the Labor Department’s monthly report released Friday, is the government’s clearest and most comprehensive look at the economic devastation in Texas since the coronavirus pandemic first swept the state in March.

Previously, the state’s worst-ever monthly unemployment rate was 9.2% in November 1986, as Texas reeled from the last big oil bust. Now, with more than 2 million Texans who have filed for unemployment during the outbreak, the contracting oil industry is only part of the state’s economic problems.

“We are in some sense a state having to deal with two extraordinarily negative circumstances all at once,” Venkatesh Shankar, an economist and director of research at the Center for Retail Studies at Texas A&M University, said in an interview.

Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2020/05/22/texas-unemployment-rate-coronavirus/