(HOUSTON) Two months into the recovery from Hurricane Harvey, Houston-area employers went on a hiring spree, according to numbers released this morning by Workforce Solutions-Gulf Coast.
“Essentially, at least according to this report along with the revisions made to September’s numbers, the hurricane and related flooding had little impact on employers,” said Parker Harvey, Senior Economist at Workforce Solutions. “Basically, the rebound was disproportionately stronger than the associated loss.”
“Overall, I’m a bit flabbergasted by this report. Many of the sectors we expected to see negatively impacted actually saw gains,” Harvey explains, “The Leisure & Hospitality sector and Retail subsector both posted bigger than expected gains in October, and saw upward revisions for September.”
Hotels and Restaurants contributed 9,200 jobs in October while retail sales added more than 8,000 which were spread fairly evenly across all types of retail stores.
The Houston area’s unemployment rate dropped, from 4.8% in September to 4.1% in October.
The Texas Workforce Commission will release employment numbers for November 2017 on December 22.