The Texas Politics Project

More than one million Texans worked for local governments in Texas in 2003. As with federal and state employment, the left hand map shows that the largest concentrations of local employees work in the state's major urban centers. But, as the right hand map shows, local government employs much larger portions of the population in western and rural counties. Teachers and school staff make up about sixty percent of these employees. Law enforcement, public safety, and local judical functions employee large numbers as well. Because of their higher populations, eastern and urban counties enjoy greater economies of scale in the performance of the tasks of local government than do more sparsely populated western and rural counties which nonetheless provide similar services to fewer and more widely dispersed people.