Texas Politics - Government Employment Across Texas Counties, 2003

State
Employment




Almost 320 thousand Texans* worked for Texas state government in 2003. As the left hand map shows, the largest concentrations of state employees, like federal employees, work in the state's major urban centers. But, as the right hand map shows, state government employs much larger portions of the population in some counties than in others, typically those containing large state facilities like prisons, universities, and state hospitals. In particular, the presence and number of state prison facilities in each county corresponds to percentage of state employees.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Texas State Data Center. (full source, footnote)

Full Source: Civilian government wage and employment data for 2003 is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Employment and Wages (CEW). The raw data file for Texas is at ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cew/2003/county/cn48tx03.zip, accessed June 3, 2005. See the links at the CEW homepage at http://www.bls.gov/cew/cewover.htm for further information. 2003 Texas county population estimates are available online from the Texas State Data Center at http://txsdc.utsa.edu/tpepp/2003_txpopest_county.csv, accessed June 3, 2005. Note that in the 2003 CEW data, out of total employment of more than 9.2 million, about 74,000 employees could not be placed in any or any one county. These are excluded from the mapped totals and percentages. Data on prisons in each county is from the Criminal Justice Policy Council, "TDCJ Facilities" accessed 16 August 2004 at http://www.cjpc.state.tx.us/stattabs/tdcjfacilities/2003facilities.pdf.

Full Footnote: State employment was just more than 265 thousand on a full time equivalent (FTE) basis according to the the U.S. Census Bureau, "State and Local Government Employment and Payroll Data, by State and Function", reported for March 2003 and accessed at ftp://ftp.census.gov/govs/apes/03stall.xls on May 17, 2005.

The Texas Politics Project

Government employment in Texas counties