By Maxine Shapiro, KERA 90.1 commentator
Dallas, TX – When people outside of Texas think of our state industries, they think of two sectors: oil or energy, and computers. I'm Maxine Shapiro with Marketplace Middays.
We of course, who live in the great state of Texas, know better. But just how diversified are we? Hidden on some back page of yesterday's Wall Street Journal on line were a couple of paragraphs discussing a newly-released index of economic diversity based on employment. There seems to have been some surprises in the state ranking. This study was released by the Buffalo Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and is actually quite interesting. To calculate this index, they used the US Census Bureau's County Business Patterns, which gives detailed employment figures by industry for every county in the country from 1986 to 1997.
So the suspense is killing you, heh? Texas ranked second in the country in diversification, right behind Illinois. They used an index average from zero to one, relating each state to the rest of country. Our index came in at .97 while Wyoming, ranking last, had an index of .16. The median was .68. I found this terribly fascinating, and decided to call the local Fed and ask them what they thought of this ranking. All economist Mine Yugel could say was that she too was surprised. In fact, she was so pleasantly surprised that soon we might be able to find it on our own Fed web site.
But unfortunately, Dallas can't claim as much diversification as say, Fort Worth. A few weeks ago, I was discussing with Mike Rosa of the Forth Worth Chamber of Commerce the fact that Fort Worth unemployment is much lower than Dallas'. His explanation: diversification. In fact, when I spoke with Mike this morning, he was probably the only person that wasn't surprised. So to conclude, if you're thinking about changing careers, you don't have to leave Texas to do it. For KERA Marketplace Middays, I'm Maxine Shapiro.
Marketplace Midday Reports air on KERA 90.1 Monday - Friday at 1:04 PM.