Amidst a positive outlook for local unemployed residents, tens of thousands of jobs in Houston were added last month.

Although the Houston area's May unemployment rate has yet to be released, the rate in Texas remained at 8.3 percent for the second consecutive month. Houston had an unemployment rate of 8.4 percent during April.

The Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown area had a total non-farm employment of 2,527,100 workers during May, according to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is up from 2,506 workers during April and only a .9 percent decrease from last year.

No industries lost jobs between April and May, while the financial activities industry is the only sector that did not add jobs over the month, maintaining its employment of 137,000 workers.

The government industry saw the biggest monthly employment increase by far, adding 9,400 jobs between April and May, to 390,100 workers. The next-highest monthly increase was in the leisure and hospitality industry, which added 4,400 workers, for a total of 239,100 jobs.

The remaining increases include:

• Trade, transportation and utilities by 1,600 jobs
• Manufacturing by 1,100 jobs
• Mining and logging by 900 jobs
• Professional and business services by 800 jobs
• Education and health services by 700 jobs
• Other services by 700 jobs
• Construction by 500 jobs
• Information by 100 jobs

Adversely, only three industries managed to add jobs over the year, with the government industry seeing the largest growth rate of 4.8 percent. The education and health services industry increased by 3.8 percent to 306,300 jobs and the and the mining and logging industry rose by 1.5 percent to 87,900 workers.

The construction industry saw the biggest decrease in employment when compared to last year, losing 9.9 percent of its workforce between May 2009 and May 2010, bringing the sector to its current total of 167,200 jobs.

Other industries that saw an over-the-year decrease in employment include: information by 5.5 percent; manufacturing by 3.5 percent; professional and business services by 2.6 percent; trade, transportation and utilities by 2 percent; financial activities by 1.9 percent; leisure and hospitality by .5 percent; and other services by .3 percent.

Labels: Jobs in Houston