The Austin and Texas economies showed slight improvement in September with job gains and flat unemployment rates, according to the Texas Workforce Commission’s monthly report.

The Austin and Texas economies showed slight improvement in September with job gains and flat unemployment rates, according to the Texas Workforce Commission’s monthly report.

The unemployment rates remained stuck at 7.4 percent in the Austin area and 8.5 percent statewide. The national rate is 9.1 percent.

Both Austin and Texas added jobs in September, but their gains came from very different sectors of the economy.

Austin added 5,200 net jobs, led by its public sector, while Texas last month saw a negligible increase of 15,400 net jobs despite losses in government jobs around the state. The state’s public sector shed 11,100 jobs in September, mostly at the local government level, raising the annual job losses in that sector to 33,700.

Still, Texas Workforce chairman Tom Pauken said he welcomed the return to statewide job growth in September, however negligible, after a net job loss in August when the government sector’s problems overshadowed private sector gains.

“I am encouraged to see that we added 26,500 private sector jobs” in September, Pauken said. “This continues a long-term trend in Texas of healthy private sector job growth with 282,200 such jobs added over the last year.”

Texas is adding jobs at an annual rate of 2.4 percent, compared to the Austin area’s 2.2 percent rate, which is up from last month’s 2 percent.

The state capital seems to have weathered budget cutbacks in the public sector with the seasonal hiring of teachers at the beginning of a school year and the start of a new fiscal year for state government. Only the federal workforce shed jobs here in September.

Almost one in four jobs in the Austin area are in the public sector, but the capital’s private sector is growing too.

Over the past 12 months, the private sector gains have been led by leisure and hospitality, construction, and education and health services.

“Texas job seekers have reason to be encouraged,” said Texas Workforce Commissioner Ronny Congleton.