Texas added 159,400 jobs over the past year, with construction jobs seeing a nearly 2% growth last month compared with August 2025.
Andrew J. Whitaker/San Antonio Express-News
The pace of Texas job growth is slowing but continues to top the national average.
State and U.S. data show Texas employers added 5,600 nonfarm jobs in August, pushing the state’s growth rate about 1% for the year. That topped the nationwide average growth rate by about one-half of a percentage point. So far this year, 159,400 jobs have been added statewide.
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The statewide unemployment rate was 4.4% on a seasonally adjusted basis.
Though the state is still adding jobs, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said it now expects the state to finish the year with an increase of about 1.2%, down from the long-run average of about 2% and the Fed’s earlier forecast of 1.7% growth.
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August’s job gains were broad-based, the Dallas Fed said, with increases in professional and business services, construction, government, manufacturing, and leisure and hospitality. Jobs also were added in financial services, trade and transportation services, and education and health services. Oil and gas jobs were unchanged while other services and information services registered job losses.
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The Texas Oil and Gas Association reported that the number of upstream salaried jobs, the positions that deal with finding and extracting energy resources, rose to 195,900 in August, an increase of 500 workers, on a year-over-year basis. Since September 2020, the number of jobs has jumped by nearly 25%.
“Texas’ steady employment growth is a testament to the talent of our workforce and the vitality of our industries,” Brent Connett, TWC commissioner representing the public, said in a statement.
The reports show that Texas job creation bounced back from July, when it fell 0.1% from a year earlier with 1,480 jobs lost. That month’s losses were concentrated in construction and manufacturing.
San Antonio, Austin employment results
In the San Antonio-New Braunfels area, there were 1,600 fewer employed workers for a total of 1.29 million this August compared with August 2025, according to Texas Workforce Commission. The biggest percentage drops were in information services, 7.7%, and government, 3.1%. Federal government jobs fell 6.7%. The metro area added jobs in several categories, with the transportation, warehousing and utilities sector growing by 7.6% and professional and business services up 4.8%.
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The Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro area added 7,500 employed workers in August compared with a year ago, giving it a total of 1.51 million people working. The sectors recording the biggest percentage increases were mining, logging and construction, up 4.2%, and manufacturing, up 2.9%. The area’s information services sector took the biggest hit, falling 5.5%.
The Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands and Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro areas also added workers, 22,900 and 14,600, respectively.
Professional services lead statewide job gains
According to Texas Workforce Commission data, professional and business services jobs increased 3.1% statewide, adding 65,100 jobs since August 2025. Leisure and hospitality saw the second-largest percentage of growth at 2.2%, adding 33,700 jobs. Construction was up 1.9% with 17,400 jobs added.
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Information jobs saw the steepest decline, falling 5.3% from the year prior. That meant a loss of nearly 12,000 jobs in the industry that includes telecommunications and data processing.
August’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in Texas is 4.4%. But when comparing the non-adjusted rate with August 2025, the rate remained unchanged at 4.6%. This was a slight improvement from July’s 4.8% rate but still higher than the U.S. average of 4.4%.
San Antonio fell right below this, reporting a 4.5% unemployment rate in August. This was up from the 4.3% rate during the same month the year prior. Austin had an even lower rate, 3.9%, which was just above the 3.8% reported in August 2025.
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The lowest unemployment rate in Texas was in the Midland metropolitan area, which had a non-seasonally adjusted rate of 3.3%.