Texas' energy grid, 5 years after Winter Storm Uri
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What happened during Winter Storm Uri in Texas?
What does one of the country's most environmentally friendly homes look like 18 years later? I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. First, there's news 130,000 more people were on America's payrolls last month. That's more than twice what was expected. Also, the separate survey of households finds the unemployment rate ticking down a sliver, 4.3% now. But this is also the moment each year when the government does revisions for previous months, and that shows a year that might earn a... B minus or C plus for hiring. Economist Julia Coronado is founder of Macro Policy Perspectives. Morning, Julia. Good morning. So first of all, that's nice. More people getting on payrolls.
Yes, a very strong number for January. We have to look at it with some caution. They warned us that winter weather reduced the response rate to the survey.
How has Texas improved its energy infrastructure since Winter Storm Uri?
And we have sort of a wild jump in health care hiring more than one hundred and thirty thousand jobs worldwide. That seems a little suspect, but the unemployment rate tells us that it is still a decent job market.
We were due for the big yearly revision today, and it looks like all those other months were revised downward. I get by 862,000 people we thought had jobs didn't.
It's not a huge surprise, but it's a confirmation that the hiring rate in the U.S. has really stepped down pretty dramatically.
So how would the Fed process this, do you think, in trying to determine is it time to lower interest rates?
Well, the Fed is going to take its cue from the unemployment rate. The lower hiring rate reflects the immigration policy that has really restricted the growth of the labor market, which really had driven strong gains over the prior years. The unemployment rate at 4.3%, that's a decent unemployment rate. That tells the Fed that the labor market isn't falling apart. They don't need to be in a rush to lower interest rates.
Economist Julia Coronado is also a professor at UT Austin. Thank you so much.
My pleasure.
What are the latest payroll and unemployment statistics in the U.S.?
It's been five years since a winter storm turned off power and heat across a lot of Texas, causing fatalities and billions of dollars in losses. Marketplace's Elizabeth Troval reports now from Houston on the big investments in energy infrastructure that followed.
When winter storm Uri hit five years ago, Ed Herz with University of Houston was at his apartment.
Lost power for more than four hours straight. And then for the next four days, you know, average maybe four hours of electricity per day.
Millions of Texans had cranked up the heat, spiking demand.
At the same time... We lost about half of our power plants during that time.
That's Joshua Rhodes with UT Austin.
And no grid is resilient to losing half of its generation capacity.
The cold knocked off power that was being produced by natural gas, coal, and nuclear plants, and wind turbines. Now, a lot of that infrastructure has been winterized. And...
We have a lot more things like energy storage. We have a lot more solar, a lot of resources that don't rely on a fuel supply chain.
But he says there are still questions about whether companies who produce and deliver natural gas have sufficiently weatherized their infrastructure.
How did the labor market respond to the recent economic changes?
And Ed Herr says that the structure of Texas's unique market means there's less incentive to build up a cushion of extra electricity.
It doesn't pay to add capacity. It doesn't pay to add reliability capacity.
But he says that cushion can save lives when extreme weather hits. I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace.
In a world where energy prices are so unpredictable, during the huge storms and chill just the other week, natural gas prices soared more than 60%. What is the right house for the next 100 years? This old house radio hour and marketplace have a one-hour special on the way called Building Tomorrow. It's out this weekend on many public radio stations. One segment was prompted by a visit I made many years ago to a renovated duplex in the Boston area. There, a physicist... had tried to make her home as environmentally friendly as her budget and the technology of the time could make it.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What happened during Winter Storm Uri in Texas?
0:01–0:51
2
How has Texas improved its energy infrastructure since Winter Storm Uri?
0:51–2:21
3
What are the latest payroll and unemployment statistics in the U.S.?
2:21–3:34
4
How did the labor market respond to the recent economic changes?
3:34–4:35
5
What lessons were learned from the energy crisis in Texas?
4:35–5:23
6
How can homes be made more environmentally friendly today?
5:23–6:56
7
What future trends are emerging in sustainable housing?
6:56–8:12