The Texas economy grew moderately in 2010, outperforming most other states. Jobs increased by 209,000, a growth rate of about 2 percent—near the state’s average pace since 1980. Strength in the high-tech and energy sectors was an important source of Texas’ economic might relative to other...

The service sector drives the Texas economy, accounting for 59 percent of private-sector output and employing close to 7 million workers. Despite the service sector’s prominence, there are no timely state-level gauges of its activity. To fill this regional data gap, the Federal Reserve Bank of...

The Texas experiment in extracting natural gas from the Barnett Shale proved the technical feasibility of shale gas development and brought costs within bounds that promise to give shale gas an important role in global energy supplies for decades to come. ; Shale gas cost estimates vary widely,...

The drought’s effects significantly suppressed U.S. economic growth in 2012. Sharply lower farm inventories subtracted 0.2 and 0.4 percentage points from already weak real GDP growth in the second and third quarters, respectively.

The value of Texas agricultural land has followed national trends since the early 1990s. Last year, however, the state's average price per acre remained unchanged, a sharp contrast to the nation's first decline in 17 years. Texas was one of only eight states that didn't see falling farm values...

Among Latinos, the U.S. born make up a majority in Texas but a minority in the rest of the country. Because natives typically earn more than immigrants, a state with a large, established population of U.S.-born Latinos might be expected to have relatively high Latino wages. That's not the case...

Texas found itself left out of the nation's first quarterly uptick in venture capital activity since 2007. Investment in the state fell 58 percent from the first to second quarter, coming in at $74 million, its lowest level since data first became available in 1995.

Texans' real median household income rose 1.3 percent in 2008, making the state one of only five with increases in the first calendar year of the U.S. recession. During better times, 33 states posted income gains in 2007 and only Michigan suffered a decline.

Latino workers in Texas are on the short end of two pay gaps. They earn substantially lower wages than the state's non-Hispanic white workers. They also earn less than Latinos working in other parts of the U.S. ; In the fourth quarter 2009 issue of Southwest Economy, we identified lower...

Upturns in the Mexican and Canadian economies, coupled with the dollar's declining value, fed strong Texas export growth in the second half of 2009. The state's real exports increased 15.8 percent from the second to fourth quarter, and the United States' NAFTA partners played a key role.