Texas employers added 5,600 nonfarm jobs in August, but San Antonio-New Braunfels and Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos moved in opposite directions: San Antonio-New Braunfels lost 1,600 employed workers compared with a year earlier, while Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos gained 7,500. San Antonio's unemployment rate was 4.3% a year earlier, while Austin's rate ticked up slightly, to 3.9% from 3.8%.
A Tale of Two Metros
According to the San Antonio Express-News, San Antonio-New Braunfels counted 1.29 million employed workers in August, down from the prior year, while Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos reported 1.51 million employed workers, up 7,500 over the same period. Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands added 22,900 workers and Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington added 14,600, according to the same report, underscoring that San Antonio was something of an outlier among the state's largest metro areas.
San Antonio's struggles were concentrated in specific sectors. Information services employment in the metro fell 7.7%, government employment dropped 3.1%, and federal government jobs specifically declined 6.7%, the Express-News reported. Not every sector in the city struggled, however: transportation, warehousing and utilities employment climbed 7.6%, and professional and business services rose 4.8% in San Antonio.
Austin's Growth Engine Keeps Humming
Austin's gains were broader. Mining, logging and construction employment in the Austin metro rose 4.2% and manufacturing jobs increased 2.9%, per the same report. Austin wasn't immune to the information-sector slump troubling the rest of the state, though — the report shows information services employment there fell 5.5%, even as other categories more than offset the loss.
The pattern in Austin tracks with a longer trend. Austin added 27,200 jobs in 2025, or 2.0% growth, ranking as the best-performing large metro among the 50 biggest in the country for job growth that year, according to Opportunity Austin. San Antonio's 2025 job growth, by contrast, was just 0.5%. Austin's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate stood at 3.7% in January, lower than San Antonio's 4.2% that same month, the group's data show.
Statewide Numbers Tell a Mixed Story
Texas has added 159,400 jobs so far in 2026, putting annual job growth at roughly 1%, about half a percentage point above the national average, per the Express-News report. That's a comedown from the state's long-run average of about 2% annual job growth. Texas's non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rate held at 4.6% in August, unchanged from a year earlier but improved from 4.8% in July, and still higher than the 4.4% national average that month.
July had been a rough patch for the state, with Texas losing 1,480 jobs and posting a 0.1% year-over-year decline, losses concentrated in construction and manufacturing, according to the Express-News. August's job creation bounced back from that dip. Job gains in August spanned professional and business services, construction, government, manufacturing, and leisure and hospitality, along with financial services, trade and transportation services, and education and health services.
Statewide, professional and business services grew 3.1% and added 65,100 jobs since August 2025. Leisure and hospitality rose 2.2%, adding 33,700 jobs, and construction climbed 1.9%, adding 17,400 jobs. Texas registered job losses in other services and in information services, where employment fell 5.3% statewide and the industry lost nearly 12,000 jobs over the year, the Express-News reported.
Oil Patch Holds Steady as Forecasts Diverge
Oil and gas jobs in Texas were unchanged in August, though the Texas Oil and Gas Association reported upstream salaried jobs rose to 195,900 that month — up 500 workers year over year and nearly 25% higher than in September 2020. Brent Connett, the Texas Workforce Commission commissioner representing the public, said in a statement that the sector's steady employment growth is a testament to the talent of the workforce and the vitality of its industries, according to the Express-News.
Forecasts for how 2026 will end up have shifted over the year. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas now expects Texas to finish 2026 with about 1.2% job growth, down from an earlier 1.7% forecast, per the Express-News. That's a notable step down from the Dallas Fed's April 3, 2026 projection, published on its Texas Employment Forecast, which put 2026 job growth at 1.9%, or roughly 278,400 jobs statewide, with an 80% confidence band running from 1.1% to 2.7%. The forecast expected growth to be nearer the lower end of that band, 1.1%; annual growth is measured as the December-to-December change.
Earlier in the year, the state's employment growth had shown promise: Texas employment grew an annualized 2.3% in January, adding 27,000 jobs, with gains led by construction, leisure and hospitality, education and healthcare services, and professional and business services, per the Dallas Fed. The bank has also pointed to declining immigration constraining labor supply and higher productivity suppressing labor demand as headwinds working against faster growth this year.
Midland held the state's lowest unemployment rate in August, at 3.3%, according to the Express-News — a reminder that even as Texas's biggest metros diverge, smaller oil-and-gas-anchored regions have their own distinct labor stories playing out.
