Texas jobs up slightly in March; unemployment rate steady

Brendan Case blogs from our Economy Watch blog about the latest employment numbers in Texas:

Texas employers expanded payrolls by 8,500 jobs in March, while the jobless rate remained unchanged at 8.2 percent for the fifth month in a row, the Texas Workforce Commission said Friday.


Government number-crunchers also made a significant revision to February's payroll employment data. Instead of losing 13,000 payrolls jobs in February, as preliminary data indicated last month, the state added 4,300 jobs.

Texas has added 32,500 jobs during the last six months, and the state unemployment rate remains well below the national average of 9.7 percent.

Texas loses 13,000 jobs in February; state unemployment holds steady at 8.2 percent

TWC reports January's small job gains wiped out in February. Brendan Case reports:

Texas employers trimmed non-farm payrolls by 13,000 jobs in February, the Texas Workforce Commission announced this morning. That erased a revised gain of 12,600 jobs in January (the preliminary figure for January, announced earlier this month, was a 14,800-job gain).

Former Texas GOP chairman Tom Pauken blasts Bush, Rove in new book

Slater takes a look at former GOP chair and current Texas Workforce Commission Tom Pauken's new book, harshly critical of  the Bush Administration and its brand of Conservatism. The book is out concurrently with Karl rove's new book.


AUSTIN – As Karl Rove makes the rounds this week with his memoir burnishing the Bush legacy, another book by another Texas Republican offers a decidedly different view.

Former state GOP chairman Tom Pauken, a Dallas lawyer and foot soldier in the Reagan revolution, offers a sober counterpoint to Rove's full-throated defense of his former boss.