The Dallas TX employment engine was misfiring as we headed into 2018. Recently revised figures from the Texas Workforce Commission show the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington MSA shedding 59,000 jobs in January. While it is typical for the January numbers to decline after the holiday turnover, the 59,000 jobs lost in January represents the highest seasonal turnover loss in several years. Employment levels were already declining with the December numbers, so this is a development that could be worth watching. We’ll know more in a few weeks when we get the February employment data.

What is particularly interesting is that the revised TWC employment numbers for the last few years just vaporized thousands of Dallas TX jobs by revising virtually all of the monthly employment totals lower back to 2015. Call it a statistical optimism reality check. Benchmark revisions are typical with the TWC employment data, but you’ll likely never hear about the thousands of DFW jobs that were just vaporized in the process.

In the age of endless growth and media misdirection don’t expect local economists or “news” reporters to actually look at the data and tell you the unadjusted truth. As a reminder, the chart and data I present here is the NON-seasonally adjusted employment data, the real stuff without the seasonal adjustments.

To make matters even more interesting the Dallas Morning News real estate desk just printed some interesting tidbits on February home sales. Unfortunately part of their story doesn’t match MLS data in the NTREIS. It also appears the DMN real estate desk doesn’t understand the difference between preowned (aka- “resale”) homes and total home sales. Go figure! From what I can tell DMN has overstated the number of resale homes sold in February, confusing that metric with total home sales. It also appears they are seriously understating the pending sales decline for February. I guess their business editor was out to lunch?