Texas Politics - Where Jobs Are--And Good Wages

Income

Texas Metro and Regional Area Per Capita Income*

Incomes everywhere in Texas today are higher than they were three decades ago. But workers in the biggest cities--Dallas, Ft. Worth, Houston, Austin--generally earn the highest incomes, exceeding state and, for some, national averages. Even the 1980s oil industry bust and the post-2000 high-tech downturn did not reduce incomes in the hard-hit richest cities to the level of San Antonio. Incomes in other parts of Texas, especially poor El Paso and the impoverished Border, are far lower.

Source: BEA. (full source, footnote)

Full Source: Per capita income data in constant dollars for all Texas counties, metropolitan areas, and the United States is from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis available at http://www.bea.gov/bea/regional/reis/, accessed 19 July 2005. Current dollars were converted to constant (2004) dollars using a conversion factor that adjusts for changes in the national consumer price index (CPI). More information on the conversion factor used is available at http://oregonstate.edu/dept/pol_sci/fac/sahr/sahr.htm, accessed 25 July 2005. A gross domestic product (GDP) deflator which adjusts for broader basket of prices than those that make up the CPI may be used for the same purpose. It yields slightly different estimates of current income levels in each year but the relative changes year-to-year and the overall trends remain much the same. A table of historical and current GDP deflators are available in 2005 Budget of the U.S. Government at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy05/hist.html, Table 10.1--Gross Domestic Product and Deflators Used in the Historical Tables: 1940-2009, accessed 13 July 2005.

Full Footnote: Per capita income figures for each region are averages of data for Texas metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). As in the first slide, we follow the Dallas Fed's practice of grouping smaller MSAs for reporting purposes. Regions featured in the line chart as the same as those in the pie chart of the first slide. The MSAs they include are as follows: Houston-Baytown-Sugar Land MSA; Dallas-Plano-Irving MSA; San Antonio MSA; Ft Worth/Arlington MSA; Austin-Round Rock MSA; Border: Laredo MSA, Brownsville-Harlingen MSA, and McAllen-Edinburg-Pharr MSA; Central: Waco MSA, College-Station-Bryan MSA, and Killeen-Temple-Fort Hood MSA; Farm Belt: Abilene MSA, San Angelo MSA, Amarillo MSA, and Lubbock MSA; Gulf Coast: Beaumont-Port Arthur MSA, Corpus Christi MSA, and Victoria MSA; North Texas: Longview MSA, Tyler MSA, Sherman-Denison MSA, and Wichita Falls MSA; Oil Patch: Midland MSA and Odessa MSA.

The Texas Politics Project

Texas employment shares, 2005