Dallas + Austin + Houston + San Antonio = 'Texas Miracle'

The entry of Rick Perry, swashbuckling Texas governor, into the contest for the Republican presidential nomination focused the country’s attention on his state’s strikingly anomalous labor market. In the year to July, the Lone Star State was responsible for one out of every five jobs created in America. This success has pundits scrambling to see whether Perry deserves credit and, more importantly, what parts of the “Texas Miracle” can be replicated elsewhere.

The political story that is Rick Perry’s candidacy obscures the metropolitan roots of the Texas story. Texas does most of its job creating in its four large metros: Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Over the past year, Dallas and Houston alone accounted for 10 percent of the net job creation in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Another BLS survey that tracks country-level employment shows that while Texas’ cities were growing, over two-thirds of the state’s rural counties lost jobs, and rural employment fell by nearly 16,000 over the past year. Growth in Texas has really been about growth in its biggest cities.