Georgetown’s unemployment rate has remained under 4 percent since March 2017, thanks in part to a healthy Texas economy. But the city’s new strategic plan shows that despite the benefits of more residents having jobs, low unemployment is putting a pinch on some local businesses looking to hire workers.

The city’s manufacturing and service industries have felt the biggest effect, Georgetown Economic Development Director Michaela Dollar said.

“(Low unemployment) still is mostly a positive indicator,” Dollar said. “It’s just something that we have to work more closely with the businesses and the workforce commission and the educational institutions to align skill sets in business.”



Georgetown’s nonseasonally adjusted unemployment rate in February was 3.6 percent, according to the latest data from the Texas Workforce Commission.

The city’s rate in February was below that for all of Texas, which was estimated at 4.1 percent, according to the commission. The Austin-Round Rock metropolitan statistical area’s jobless rate was estimated at 3 percent in February.

Georgetown City Council approved the city’s new economic development strategic plan in February. The plan includes four strategic goals to support existing business, enhance targeted recruitment of new business, diversify the city’s workforce development and encourage speculative development.

Dollar said the strategic plan identifies Georgetown’s low unemployment as a potential challenge for some industries. She said the effect is felt most in the city’s service and manufacturing industries, where businesses have reported challenges hiring entry-level workers.

Georgetown’s economic strategy focuses on recruiting new employers to the area based on whether they have demand for workers who already live in the city or within the city’s labor shed, an area that stretches from South Austin to Temple and includes about 700,000 people from which local businesses could draw workers, according to a target-industry analysis completed in August 2017.

“We know that we have access to the employees, but it’s a matter of them knowing they can find opportunity in Georgetown, as well,” Dollar said.

Dollar said such a strategic focus avoids a “double-edged sword” where the city would have a need for new companies as well as new workers. Instead, it is better to recruit workers for new types of industries from within the city’s existing labor shed, Dollar said. In that sense, a low unemployment rate is not ideal but it is also not an insurmountable challenge, she said.

“It doesn’t mean that we’re not a great place for businesses,” she said. “A low employment rate shouldn’t hinder a business from looking at Georgetown, but as an economic development agency, we are aware of it and trying to be proactive.”