Behind the Numbers: Amarillo Employment and Construction Statistics

Amarillo recorded an unemployment rate of 3.7 percent, below the statewide Texas average of 4.4 percent, while total employment reached 131,700 workers after adding 2,200 positions since February 2025.

These figures arrive as the Texas Panhandle continues to track monthly labor-market releases from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and local economic-development offices. City officials and regional analysts use the same data series to compare Amarillo against broader state trends and to gauge whether recent hiring gains hold steady through the rest of the year.

Employment totals and sector mix

The 131,700 employed workers reflect activity across the region’s established industries. Advanced manufacturing, food processing, logistics, aviation and renewable energy together form the core of local payrolls, according to the Amarillo Economic Analysis posted on anb.com. Each of those sectors appears in the same employment totals that rose by 2,200 jobs over the five-month span ending in the most recent report.

Retail sales have also moved higher in tandem with new data-center projects now under way in the Panhandle. The Amarillo Economic Development office lists those projects among the factors supporting current job counts, though the office does not break out exact retail dollar figures in the summary tables.

Construction permit surge

Construction activity jumped 160 percent in April compared with the same month one year earlier, while year-to-date permit values stand 36 percent above the prior-year pace. The Bureau of Labor Statistics metro-area release for the Amarillo MSA supplies the monthly and cumulative permit counts behind those percentages.

The same construction pipeline has contributed to the retail-sales gains noted in regional newsletters. Data-center sites require both materials and labor, and those expenditures register in the local sales-tax collections tracked by the city.

Analysts at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and the city’s economic-development staff continue to monitor the same BLS series and permit logs. Readers can review the full tables at https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.tx_amarillo_msa.htm and https://www.amarillo.gov/economic-development/ for the next scheduled updates.