College Station-Bryan MSA continues to do well despite slight fluctuations

BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) - The latest economic indicators released by the Texas A&M Private Enterprise Research Center show the College Station-Bryan Metropolitan Statistical Area remains healthy despite slight fluctuations in employment and unemployment.

In the latest report, unemployment saw a slight increase from 3.1% in December to 3.2% this year in January. Between those same months, employment decreased by 0.2%. Despite these changes, experts said the College Station-Bryan MSA which encompasses Brazos, Burleson, and Robertson counties, continues to do well.

Even with a .1% increase in local unemployment the College Station-Bryan MSA still remains lower than the state’s 3.9% and the country’s 3.6%. The College Station-Bryan MSA is the second-lowest in Texas behind Amarillo, Austin-Round Rock, and Midland which all have an unemployment rate of 2.9%.

“In our hospitality area, I know that all of the numbers that have come out as far as room rate, room occupancy has all been good all that translated into a lot of different hospitality restaurants, etc. tourism,” Bryan-College Station Chamber of Commerce President Glen Brewer said. “I think that has helped a little bit on unemployment numbers.”

Non-farm employment has already surpassed its pre-pandemic peak and overall has continued to grow steadily despite the recent decrease. Brewer said there are a lot of new companies coming into the area and a lot of Aggies staying in the area to open their own companies.

“I know Katherine Kleemann said in our economic outlook conference the gig economy, there’s a lot of people here that are on their phones deciding when they’re going to work and when they’re not going to work,” Brewer said. “All the different areas where they might not be showing up in an office, but they’re working from their car or their house.”

While unemployment may be low, and employment growing, some businesses are still struggling to find employees, especially in the leisure and hospitality industry.

“It’s difficult. Kanji Sushi just opened up three and a half months ago and while it is very popular we are actually still short-staffed on both front and the back and that story is actually the same for the rest of our family of restaurants at Urban Table and Solt,” Restaurant owner and chef Tai Lee said.

Lee said he’s offering competitive wages and employee discounts to hire and keep staff, but over the past three years, there has been a lack of interest in the industry because of the high-contact nature of the restaurant business. It has also created difficulty in finding skilled employees as well as new hires, Lee said.

“Especially on a sushi bar it is very skill-driven industry at least for the chefs not that other industry isn’t, but it is very hands-on and there are only a hand full of people that can do sushi at the caliber that we require to work,” Lee said. “It is very hard to attract people from outside of the town to come to Bryan-College Station and also try to find somebody within this town.”

Brewer said he believes restaurants are having difficulty attracting new employees because the “gig economy” has provided individuals with a flexible schedule.

“A lot of people who use to be working at a restaurant can now drive a car or do delivery there are all kinds of apps that they can decide when they want to work and didn’t want to work,” Brewer said. “I think that pulls a lot of people out of a sector that used to be plentily here in a college town.”

While Lee’s restaurants have started to recover from the pandemic some are still struggling with sales performance and he hopes the industry can make a full recovery soon.

“We just need our local consumers to be kind of looking at our local restaurant scene and see ‘hey which one have I not visited in a while because I use to do a bunch of take out let’s go give them a visit,’” Lee said.

After looking over the latest economic indicators Brewer said the chamber is happy about where the local economy is at.

“We’ve always said A&M with helping us out here in our local economy, when things are good they’re usually a little bit better here when things slow down they’re not quite as bad,” Brewer said. “I don’t think we’ve felt any particular slowdown at this time. I think we’re still revving back up coming out of COVID coming out of supply chain issues.”

To view, the full economic indicators go to perc.tamu.edu

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