so far it hasn't, other than, of course, investment opportunity
(actually seem to have a bit more money available for saving and discretionary spending)
according to this Wall St Journal article, what I said may be changing:
Job Losses Loom as the Recession Arrives in Texas
By LESLIE EATON
The national recession is about to catch up with Texas, costing the state 111,000 jobs in the next six months, the state comptroller warned legislators in Austin on Monday.
The new forecast is a sharp turnaround for Texas, which for months continued to prosper even as the economy crumbled in most of the rest of the U.S. While most states were shedding jobs in the 12 months ended in November, Texas added 221,000.
As always in Texas, oil and gas prices played a leading role in the economy's boom, and now are contributing to the bust.
But the state also has become a major exporter, leaving it more vulnerable to the global downturn as demand shrinks for U.S. goods, economists say.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas compiles reports about regional economic activity for the national study known as the Beige Book; for Texas, "it's been getting worse and worse each time it comes out," said Mine K. Yucel, a senior economist at the bank.
The bank's index of leading indicators hit a 2008 peak in June -- about the same time oil was reaching highs above $140 a barrel -- but has since dropped, as have gauges of manufacturing and exports.
The state's economy held up better than the nation's in the recession of 2001-02, but continued to slow in 2003 when the rest of the country rebounded. And in the 1980s, the energy bust brought economic activity in the state to a standstill for years.
Those experiences prompted state efforts to diversify the economy. The oil and gas business, which accounted for about 20% of the state's economy in the early 1980s, dropped to under 4% by 1998, according to data from the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis.
But as oil prices started to climb in 2002, so did energy's share of the Texas economy. Karr Ingham, an economist who advises the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, says that energy's share of the state gross domestic product probably hit 10% in 2008.
The energy-producing states fared relatively well in the past year, with the Dakotas, Oklahoma, Wyoming and Alaska joining Texas in the dwindling club of states with job growth. Unemployment rates in November in these states remain under the national average of 6.7%: In Texas it is 5.7%, and in New Mexico, 4.3%.
But with oil's drop -- crude futures settled at $37.59 a barrel Monday -- "that buffer has been eroding," Mr. Ingham said.
Texas Comptroller Susan Combs predicts a $2 billion reduction in taxes on production of natural gas and oil over the next two years, contributing to a total $9 billion -- or 10.5% -- decline in revenue.
The state gets most of its funding through sales taxes, which Ms. Combs's office predicts will actually increase by 2.9% in the next budget cycle.
That, she said in an interview, is because Texas isn't experiencing the kind of foreclosure epidemic seen elsewhere.
Texas hasn't been immune to the real-estate slowdown. Both building permits and existing-home sales have fallen by a third in the past 12 months.
But unlike in cities such as Phoenix, Las Vegas and San Francisco -- where home prices have fallen more than 30% from their peak -- home values in Texas have held relatively firm. Prices fell an average of 5.5% in the 12 months ended in November, according to data from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University.
