Employment Trends of Two Oil Episodes
105
Jun
Aug
Oct
Dec
| 2014
Feb
Apr
Jun
Aug
Oct
Dec
| 2015
100
Feb
Apr
Jun
Aug
Oct
Dec
| 2016
Feb
Apr
| 2017
95
Employment beginning January 1986
90
Jan
| 1986
Mar
May
Jul
Sep
Nov
Jan
Mar
May
| 1987
Jul
Sep
Nov
Jan
Mar
May
Jul
Sep
Nov
| 1988
Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and author's calculations.
Given the lessons from the 1986 oil bust, Texas and, in particular, Corpus Christi would
be vulnerable to the recent oil price collapses. Although the pace of employment growth has
indeed slowed down considerably, most economic indicators for the Corpus Christi metro
area so far have shown no resemblance to the experiences of the 1980s. Like the state of
Texas, the area economy is more diversified today, but general economic diversification is
not the main reason for its resilience to the effects of the oil market collapse.
Instead, Corpus Christi is undergoing a facelift and a boom in both industrial and
residential construction has offset many of the job losses associated with the falling oilrelated activity. Beyond the temporary effects during the current construction phase,
the dozen large-scale industrial plants under development near the Port of Corpus
Christi are also poised to transform the economic landscape of the area.
In addition to the construction-related increases, the region is buffered from oil price
declines by low natural gas prices and wide availability. With natural gas at industrial hubs
prices under $2.00 per million BTU’s, its viability as a feedstock in petrochemical
manufacturing, and its affordability as a power/energy source, has become a major underpinning factor in the economy. The natural gas shale revolution has made petrochemical
manufacturing areas such as Corpus Christi particularly attractive to gas-users.
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