Economist Ray Perryman chuckles at a speaker before he goes on at the Texas Chamber of Commerce Executives Conference Wednesday at the Odessa Marriott Hotel & Conference Center. The three-day conference was a chance for the Odessa Chamber to show the community off to chambers from around the state. (Ruth Campbell|Odessa American)
The Texas economy, inflation and workforce issues were among the items economist Ray Perryman expected to talk about during remarks at the Texas Chamber of Commerce Executives Conference Wednesday.
Held at the Odessa Marriott Hotel & Conference Center, it drew about 200 chamber executives from around the state. It wraps up Thursday. Perryman spoke to the Odessa American before appearing before the group.
Perryman said the Texas economy is doing great.
“At this point, we’ve slowed down a little bit. Obviously, we come back from the pandemic … We created 50,000 jobs last month. It’s pretty amazing, given everything that’s going on, just how well the economy is doing. We’re bringing a lot of new people or new businesses. There’s a lot of good things going on,” he added.
With interest rates on mortgages shooting up from 3 percent to 7 percent, housing has slowed down a little bit.
“It’s slowed down some in most markets, so we’re seeing some of those effects of the higher interest rates, but in balance, it still just remains really strong again. We gained 50,000 jobs last month. That’s the state gaining 1,500 jobs a day. It’s incredible and then the population numbers just came out. We gained 470,000 people last year. The town I grew up in had 1,200 people. We’re getting more than that every day in the state of Texas. A lot of those are people moving and bringing with them skills and education … which is very important,” Perryman said.
Currently, the I-35 corridor is seeing the most growth.
Austin is still growing, but not as fast as it normally does due to layoffs in the tech industry.
“The Permian Basin is doing quite well because the oil and gas industry is hitting record levels of production right now. That’s driving a lot of economic output in the Permian Basin … East Texas is doing well. The border region keeps growing. They obviously have some huge challenges to deal with at the border … right now …,” Perryman said.
He added that there is a lot of “re-shoring” going on.
”A lot of the companies that were supplying things from other parts of the world since COVID, they’re trying to move a lot of those plants in northern Mexico. That’s having a really good, positive impact on some of the border communities. There’s really good stuff going on pretty much everywhere,” Perryman said.
Houston is doing “pretty well” right now. They shut down the ports during the pandemic and the healthcare industry, another big sector of their economy, was under “huge stress.”
“They had a lot to come back from, but they’ve done really well. … They just listed I think it was the … 10 fastest growing cities in the country of any size recently and Texas had, I think five or six of the top 10. It’s crazy. Georgetown was the fastest growing city in the country under that,” Perryman said.
“Then in terms of year over year job and income growth was Midland because the oil industry generates so much income. That will go down a little bit this year because those are statistics that were still back when oil was $130 a barrel. But nonetheless, production just keeps hitting records,” he added.
Asked what role chambers of commerce play in this, Perryman said chambers are in some ways the core organizations that try to promote all the communities in Texas. He noted that some of the largest cities in the country are in Texas, but it also has very small communities.
“They all have different assets, different resources. Some attract one type of industry; some attract another type of industry, and chambers are very much the ones out promoting their cities all the time, so it’s a very important role they play,” Perryman said.
He said he would also talk about how inflation is coming down, but still has a ways to go, and the workforce shortage that will probably linger for a while.
“When you have a shortage, everybody’s trying to compete for the same workers and that happens quite a bit these days,” he added.
He didn’t know if he would get to touch on it, but Perryman said there is no more important issue in this area and the state than educating young people.
“The rest of the country is losing young people. Texas is gaining young people, but it’s a challenge to educate those kids. But literally the difference in having a great workforce and a very competitive economy and having a lot of folks who need some additional help to get by is how well we educate them. So there’s nothing, to me, more important to future Texas; not the oil drilling, not the tech and Austin, or the life sciences in Dallas. There’s nothing more important,” Perryman said.
Jim Johnson, board chair of the Texas Chamber of Commerce Executives Conference and president and CEO of the Pearland Chamber of Commerce, said the gathering has been exceptional, offering high-quality professional development for the state’s chamber executives.
This was the first time Johnson had been to the Basin.
“(It’s) such a treat to come out and experience West Texas and we appreciate the hospitality of the Odessa Chamber, Discover Odessa and the entire community,” Johnson said.
In a news release, Odessa Chamber President/CEO Renee Earls said the organization was proud to show the community off to colleagues from across the state.
Discover Odessa put out a bid to host the event more than a year ago and it became a reality with three full days of events.
