To a loyal resident, the only time Texas looks better in the rearview mirror is when oil prices have crashed.
That's not to say the Lone Star State has lost physical charm just because the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil loiters at half its level of a year ago.
Around Houston, spring is galloping greenward, bluebonnets are blooming, and the pride of residency that so annoys Americans forced to inhabit other states seems as strong as ever.
It's the rear view on employment that a price slump can make appealing.
With a quarter of 2015 now painful history, 2014 looks fine indeed.
Last year, reports the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Texas employment grew 3.4% after increasing 2.7% in 2013. The 2014 employment number was a full percentage point above the national average.
Since returning, in late 2011, to the level of its peak before the 2008-09 recession, Texas has added 1.1 million jobs, according to an article by Keith R. Phillips and Christopher Sliijk in the Dallas Fed's quarterly Southwest Economy. That's expansion of 10.2%.
The US didn't get back to its prerecession employment-growth peak until April of 2014 and at yearend was just 2.3 million jobs-1.6%-above the previous high.
Since the price plunge, of course, with the oil and gas industry shedding workers aggressively, Texas job growth has fallen to just above the national level.
The outlook isn't rosy. For the 3 months ending Jan. 31, a Dallas Fed index of leading indicators swung sharply negative. Key factors: the Texas value of the dollar, the real oil price, and well permits.
With a forecasting model that accounts for past job growth and the leading index, the Dallas Fed projects Texas job growth in 2015 of 1-2%.
There is a good chance that Texas will trail the nation in job growth for the first time in 12 years, write Phillips and Sliijk.
Maybe. But the rest of the country doesn't have bluebonnets.
