Center for Community and Business Research

University of Texas at San Antonio SBDC

SBDC business advisors provide training and consulting to entrepreneurs at the Instiutute for Economic Development located at the University of Texas at San Antonio Downtown Campus.

Download the San Antonio SBDC area report

The eleven counties served by the San Antonio SBDC are uniquely situated. At the center of these counties lies San Antonio at the convergence of three vegetation regions, two climatic zones, and two languages and cultures.

The convergence of these factors explain the rich history of San Antonio and the surrounding counties and why Will Rogers, one of America’s great commentators, reputedly called San Antonio “one of America’s four unique cities.”

San Antonio is a great place of culture, history and fun family activities, which makes it a great tourism destination. But San Antonio has become much more than that over the last quarter century. It is now the 8th largest city in the United States and is located at the southern end of the Austin-San Antonio Corridor that runs along U.S. Interstate 35. San Antonio proper has almost doubled in size during the last 25 years, from 786 thousand inhabitants in 1980 to over 1.2 million in 2004.

The health care, biosciences, hospitality and financial services sectors of San Antonio are heavy contributors to the economic impact and employment for the city. Small businesses are very important to San Antonio’s economy with approximately 90 percent of firms employing less than 20 employees.

The communities surrounding San Antonio in the Hill Country, Brush Country and Blackland Prairies add to the richness of the San Antonio experience because of their unique cultures, even though San Antonio’s Bexar County accounts for almost 85 percent of the employment in the 11 county area served by the SBDC. It is no wonder that the UTSA Institute for Texan Cultures is located in San Antonio, as San Antonio includes and is surrounded by communities of Mexicans, Germans, Alsatians, Poles, Czechs, African-Americans, and Italians, just to mention a few.

Labor Market Highlights

The San Antonio field center area experienced steady growth in jobs from the beginning of 2004 to the beginning of 2006, from approximately 911,000 to 947,000 jobs. Even as the labor force grew, members looking for work declined over the same period, from nearly 56,000 claims to little more than 40,000 at the end of 2005. Correspondingly, the unemployment rate fell from 6.1 percent to 4.2 percent during that time.

The Field Center Area Jobs chart shows both the number of jobs in field center counties and the concentration of the industry relative to the rest of the state at the end of the first quarter of 2005. Keep in mind that Bexar County dominates the San Antonio field center area, with over 84 percent of the jobs. As goes the City of San Antonio, so goes the San Antonio field center area.

The “field center ratio” shows the proportion of industry jobs compared to all jobs in the area. As in most other southwest Texas field center areas, nearly half of the jobs in the San Antonio field center area are in two industries: education and health services (0.245); and trade, transportation, and utilities (0.202).

The question of whether these industry ratios are high or low can be determined by comparing them with the proportions that the industry represents in the rest of the state. For example, the field center area reports 96,098 professional and business service jobs, which is over 12 percent of all jobs in the area. To reflect the state average, the proportion needs to be nearly 12 percent of jobs in this industry. Dividing 0.124 (the field center ratio) by 0.119 (the state ratio) yields a quotient of 1.04. This number is referred to as a “location quotient.” When the location quotient is less than 1.0, the area industry is under-represented relative to the state. When the location quotient is greater than 1.0, the area industry is over-represented relative to the state.

So, a quotient of 1.04 indicates that the professional and business service industry is represented in the San Antonio field center area at roughly the same level as the state average.

Which industries have a particular foothold in the San Antonio Field Center? Although an array of industries hover above a location quotient of 1.0, two top out at 1.23: financial activities (60,000-plus jobs) and leisure and hospitality (90,000-plus jobs). Whereas these two industries account for about 16 percent of jobs in the state, they represent nearly 20 percent of jobs in the San Antonio field center area.

The San Antonio field center area displays the industry balance that one might expect in a major metropolitan area. Not surprising, natural resources and mining jobs are strongly under-represented in the San Antonio field center. On the other hand, somewhat surprising, the manufacturing industry lags substantially here. If the San Antonio field center area added 30,000 manufacturing jobs to its current base of nearly 47,000, it would still fall behind the state average.