How is employment there?
Rotten, for the first time since it's founding the capital of Texas is losing population because of poor employment prospects. The departure of the unemployed is the only thing keeping the official unemployment rate down.
statesman.com
<font color=brown> Natural population growth -- that is, babies born -- did not compensate for the roughly 10,000 people who left Austin's city limits between July 1, 2001, and July 1, 2002, according to Texas state demographer Steve Murdock.
The population flight appears to be closely tied to job losses in Central Texas. The Austin metropolitan area lost a net of at least 30,000 jobs between mid-2000 and mid-2002, or about 5 percent of the job base, said Chris Engle, vice president and senior analyst at Austin-based AngelouEconomics Inc.
"I think we're finally starting to see the data reflect what we've all been watching for the last two years, and that's a steep decline in the job base and the loss of population to larger, more traditional job markets," Engle said. "It is a deeper recession than Austin has felt before, at least in the past 30 years." </font>
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