The regional unemployment rate in Southeast Texas improved again in April, continuing a two-month trend of reduction to 9.9% after a brief rise in the early spring.
April also brought signs that the area’s leisure and hospitality businesses could be seeing some much needed growth after months of leading in Southeast Texas’ unemployment claims.
In April, more than 100 new leisure and hospitality jobs were gained between Jefferson, Orange, Hardin and Newton counties. Claims from limited-service restaurant employees dropped to the fifth-highest sector for unemployment benefit claims, a list it had been leading since the middle of 2020.
“Although the pace may be slow, we continue to see a gradual recovery from the effects of COVID-19,” Mary Hammon, executive director of Workforce Solutions Southeast Texas, said in a release. “We hope to see this trend continue.”
Across the state, the leisure and hospitality industry added 14,100 jobs in April, growing annually at 46.1%.
The Beaumont-Port Arthur metropolitan area saw a 200-job bump in the manufacturing sector, despite 59 employees from Trinity Rail Services in Vidor who were supposed to be officially laid off by the end of April.
Other key job sectors for the region continued to lead unemployment claims, including crude petroleum extraction, oil and gas pipeline construction and industrial building construction.
The rolling average of claims in Southeast Texas has been declining slightly since the beginning of the month, falling from around 4,300 claims in the week of April 10 to around 3,300 claims in the week of May 8.
Another wave of layoffs that happened earlier in the month could also be contributing to a boost in claims.
Mitsubishi Chemical announced in November that it would be closing the Lucite International facility between Beaumont and Nederland that employs about 164 full-time workers.
In a notice to the state filed Jan. 25, Lucite International said 99 people would be laid off by the beginning of May.
April’s regional unemployment rate is a far cry from the 17.4% recorded by the Texas Workforce Commission during the same time last year, but parts of Southeast Texas are still seeing disproportionately high jobless numbers.
The city of Port Arthur has had one of the highest unemployment rates in both the city and the state during the pandemic, reaching 22.8% in April of 2020 as the pandemic and related lockdowns started to take hold in the region.
In April of this year, it lowered to 15.2% but is still six points higher than Beaumont’s.
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