> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.huntsvillan.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Bottoms up - URL: https://www.huntsvillan.com/bottoms-up/ - Published: 2026-11-05T18:30:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-06T14:10:35.000Z - Description: Walker County is experiencing a miniature recession, with significant deterioration in the job market over the past year and a half. - Author: Steph Mamber If you've lived any amount of time in Texas, there has always been one constant in the background: growth. More people, more jobs, more money. This holds extra-true for our pocket of the state. Walker County is positioned just north of Houston, one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the country, and insulated from recessions by two large state employers, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and Sam Houston State University. Nonetheless, as with stocks, past performance does not guarantee future returns. In the last year or two, job growth has stalled across the state as a whole and Walker County in particular. What the future has in store is anyone's guess. ## A miniature recession In a recession, jobs go down, unemployment goes up, and less stuff gets produced. The U.S. has recessions rarely – just two in the last twenty years – and Texas even more rarely, because of its historically high rate of growth. Nonetheless, job statistics collected by the federal government – if there's one thing the feds can do, it's count stuff – show a modest but distinct decline in Walker County employment over the past 12-18 months. This decline can be seen two ways. Among people who *live* in Walker County, employment growth started slowing down in early 2025 and turned negative before the year concluded. These declines have continued throughout 2026, at a rate of about 1% per year. In April 2025, the peak of post-Covid employment, 29,750 Walker County residents were working. A year and a half later, in September 2026, there were 1,500 fewer. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/45/95/45959c34-5dee-4d85-8f61-0c88439f0a1c/content/images/2026/11/Picture1.png) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/45/95/45959c34-5dee-4d85-8f61-0c88439f0a1c/content/images/2026/11/Picture2.png) Data from the [Local Area Unemployment Statistics](https://texaslmi.com/LMIbyCategory/LAUS). The 12 month growth rate is the percentage change from the given month relative to the same month in the previous year. Job growth has also stalled across the state as a whole, though less dramatically. Over the past year, there's been barely any job growth at all. Walker County is experiencing a particularly acute case of a general Texas malady. ## Not unemployment so much as not employment While unemployment has risen in Walker County and across the state as a whole during this period, the increases have not been dramatic. In April 2025, our county's unemployment rate was 3.6%, a very low number. In September 2026, it was 4.4% – higher, but still a low number. So it's not that people can't find work. Instead, the number of people who want to work has tapered off. The "labor force" consists of everyone who is working or looking for a job, and it has shrunk too, almost as much as employment has. This is fairly unusual. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/45/95/45959c34-5dee-4d85-8f61-0c88439f0a1c/content/images/2026/11/Picture3.png) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/45/95/45959c34-5dee-4d85-8f61-0c88439f0a1c/content/images/2026/11/Picture4.png) Data from the [Local Area Unemployment Statistics](https://texaslmi.com/LMIbyCategory/LAUS). This pattern suggests one of the causes of this job decline: aggressive immigration enforcement by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). As immigrants leave the county, they are not available to work. The timing also suggests a second cause: large tariffs implemented by President Trump soon after taking office in January 2025\. Texas, with a large immigrant population and a lot of international trade, would be particularly hard-hit by both. The state's unemployment rate currently exceeds the nation's (by a small amount). This was not the case one year ago, or two. ## Private sector declines, public sector gains What kinds of jobs have been lost? A different set of government statistics measures jobs *located* within Walker County, broken down into public sector and private sector. This information, though not quite as recent, confirms job losses within our county – and shows that they are confined to the private sector. Over the eighteen months from the end of 2024 to early 2026, state and local government jobs are both up slightly. Only private sector jobs are down. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/45/95/45959c34-5dee-4d85-8f61-0c88439f0a1c/content/images/2026/11/Job-Growth-1.jpg) Data from the [Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages](https://texaslmi.com/LMIbyCategory/QCEW). Roughly half of Walker County's jobs are in government, with the schools, the prisons, and SHSU all major employers. For the employment situation, this is good news, as these sectors' growth offset private sector losses. Looking into the past, Walker County has experienced these kinds of dips before, even outside of national recessions. But this one is unusually long lasting, and is accompanied by severe economic headwinds prompted by armed conflict, aggressive immigration enforcement, and unusually high tariffs. Past results are no guarantee of future performance. There is no telling what the future may bring. 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