Heavy job losses in the oil and gas industry all but stalled employment growth in the Houston area, as the regions's unemployment rate topped the U.S. average for the first time in nearly a decade, according to state data released Friday.

Unemployment in greater Houston has climbed more than a half-percentage point over the past year, rising to 4.8 percent in April from 4.1 percent in April 2015 and exceeding the national rate of 4.7 percent. It was the first time since November 2006 that the metropolitan area recorded a higher jobless rate (not adjusted for seasonal variations) than the nation as whole.

The local economy, meanwhile, generated just 10,000 jobs over the year that ended in April, a growth rate of just 0.3 percent, compared with 1.6 percent in Texas and 1.9 percent nationally. But given the extent of the oil bust, which has lasted nearly two years, local economy watchers expressed relief that Houston's overall employment is still growing.

"The fact that we had growth at all in April makes me feel better than I felt last night," says Patrick Jankowski, senior vice president at the Greater Houston Partnership, a business association. "It's nothing to be excited about, unless you're excited about not losing jobs."

Your browser does not support the iframe HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later.

It's an abrupt change of fortunes for Houston, which added 463,000 jobs in the metro area between the bottom of the recession in 2010 and the top of the oil boom four years later, becoming one of the best job markets in the country during an anemic national recovery.

Contraction in the energy sector has been the main drag on Houston's job growth. The mining and logging sector, which includes the oil and gas industry, shed 14,000 jobs - about 1 in 7 - over the past year, according to state employment data. Local manufacturing, most of which is tied to energy, lost 18,500 jobs, a plunge of more than 7 percent from April 2015.

Those losses were more than offset by job gains at universities, hospitals, hotels and restaurants. Educational and health services added 17,000 jobs over the year, an increase of nearly 5 percent. Employment in leisure and hospitality grew by 18,600 jobs, or about 6 percent, from April 2015.

New jobs pay less

Simply counting jobs, however, only tells part of the story. The new jobs being added pay less, on average, than the ones being lost. A Houston-area worker in mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction earns about $3,226 per week, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Manufacturing pays an average $1,671 a week.

In contrast, workers in educational services make an average $901 per week, and in health care, $1,062.

The loss of these high-paying jobs appears to be rippling through the local economy. Car sales in Houston plunged 33 percent in April from a year earlier after rising to an all-time high at the end of 2015, according to the Infonation, a Sugar Land car data firm. Home sales are flat overall, and starting to decline in close-in neighborhoods, like the Heights and Galleria, and suburbs like The Woodlands, which benefited most from new hires in the high-rolling energy industry.

"Eventually the gravity of low oil will take its toll on those non-energy-related parts of the economy," explained Parker Harvey, regional economist at the Houston-Galveston Area Council.

The luxury apartment market, which boomed with oil and gas business, is also feeling the pain of the oil and gas bust. After years of expansion that added one new project after another, occupancy rates for high-end apartments are falling, sliding to 79.5 percent in April from 84.3 percent in August 2014. One-third of new buildings trying to lease units are offering two months of free rent, according to the Houston-based research firm Apartment Data Services.

"One free month is kind of expected," said president Bruce McClenny. "But once it gets to two months, you know that numbers are depressing a little bit."

Dialing back plans

For developers, that has meant dialing back plans. Construction permits for multi-family projects such as apartment building tumbled in early 2016 because of a softening job market and banks becoming wary of lending to mega-projects as the oil downturn drags on.

The office market may be the worse off, with 14.5 million square feet going under construction just before the price of oil fell through the floor. Office leasing activity declined 30.3 percent over the year in the first quarter of 2016, according to Colliers International. As a result of the glut in office space and high end apartments, construction jobs are expected to peter out toward the end of next year.

Other communities that depend on oil and gas were hit even harder than Houston, which has diversified its economy since the last great oil bust in the 1980's. Employment in the oil-patch towns of Odessa and Midland fell 5 percent and 3 percent respectively over the past year, reflecting the near-cessation in new drilling activity in the Permian Basin.

The strongest job growth in the state was in Austin-Round Rock and Dallas-Fort Worth, both of which added jobs at a 4 percent rate over the last year, about double the U.S. rate.