Austin Texas metro unemployment numbers just in 4.5%

[Aaron Gordy]

Year over year Austin metro employment (in thousands) increased from 1034.7 to 1,211. Unemployment decreased from 11.8% to 4.5%. The leisure and hospitality market made the strongest moves with a 55.8% increase. That is to be expected given that vaccinations for Covid 19 are on the rise nationwide and the tourism industry opening up. I fully expect the overall employment numbers to increase significantly once Tesla, Apple, etc is completed and the unemployment percentage will go down. The restaurants are competing heavily for employees. I saw a Chipotle banner near my house advertising 18$ per hour. Very interesting!

[Ryan Kelly]

@Aaron Gordy hopefully all the NEW money pouring into town can share some of it with the local restaurants and bars that got walloped from COVID closures. Would love to get them all up and running again!