Market Intelligence

What the Houston Data Is Actually Telling Us

The Dallas Fed released its Houston Economic Indicators report last week. The picture is nuanced but clear: Houston payrolls grew just 1.2% annualized over the three months ending in February. Year over year, job growth was effectively flat at 0.5%.

Professional and business services added 4,200 jobs, leading all sectors. Construction grew a notable 5.0%. But oil and gas employment contracted 6.7%, losing 5,000 positions. Gasoline prices in Houston have surged 58% since January, driven by higher crude prices and geopolitical disruption.

There is a forward indicator worth watching: the Houston Purchasing Managers Index climbed to 52.3 in March, up from 50.2 in December. Readings above 50 signal expansion. The subcomponents showed upticks in sales, employment, and raw materials purchases. That suggests the pace of job growth will accelerate over the next four to nine months.

Read together, these signals suggest a quieter window now and a more competitive one later in the year.

The Opportunity

What May Tends to Reveal About Hiring Discipline

May is a month that tests how disciplined an organization is about leadership timing. Memorial Day anchors the back half. School lets out. Boards take a breath. Search committees push meetings to "after the holiday." Decision-making slows across the board.

The pattern we see year after year is that companies who treat May as a thoughtful starting point, rather than a waiting room, tend to enter Q3 with their leadership already in motion. The shape of that timeline tends to look something like this:

None of this requires urgency for its own sake. It requires looking at the calendar honestly and asking whether your organization is positioned to lead in Q3 or to catch up.

Industry Watch

Energy, Tariffs, and the Leadership Gap Nobody Is Talking About

Houston's energy sector is navigating a structural shift that goes well beyond commodity prices. Tariffs on steel, aluminum, and electrical components from Mexico and Canada are increasing project costs across pipeline construction, LNG infrastructure, and grid buildout. The USMCA review underway this year is introducing new uncertainty for companies that built supply chains around North American integration.

At the same time, Texas is expected to add more solar capacity than any other form of power in 2026, even as federal tax credits for new projects phase out after 2027. Data center demand is reshaping the ERCOT grid. LNG export growth continues. The "dual energy economy" is now the operating reality.

What this tends to mean for leadership: the operators most useful to your energy, infrastructure, or PE-backed portfolio company in this environment are rarely one-dimensional. The roles ask for people who have navigated regulatory complexity, managed capital expenditure under cost pressure, built cross-functional teams across traditional and emerging energy, and done it in periods where the rules were changing mid-play. Many of those operators are already in Houston. The ones with the deepest experience are usually not visible on job boards, which is one reason the search process matters as much as the talent pool.

The Match

The Gap Between Current State and Desired State

A pattern shows up in conversations with leaders across the Houston market right now, on both sides of the table.

Highly capable people, the kind who have built divisions, turned around businesses, and led through real complexity, are looking for a seat where their experience maps to the actual problem the organization is trying to solve. They want a place to find fulfillment, productivity, and an efficient use of what they have spent a career building. Not any role. The right role. In an environment that values implementation over optics.

On the other side, organizations are sitting on critical leadership gaps. Sometimes because the timing feels uncertain. Sometimes because a previous hire did not work out and the appetite for risk has narrowed. Often because the work of clearly defining what the role actually needs to deliver has not yet happened.

The match between the two sides exists more often than people realize. The bridge is rarely about finding more candidates. It is about a process disciplined enough to clarify what the role really requires, then evaluate the people who fit that picture with enough rigor that both sides can move forward with confidence.

For Leaders Considering Their Next Move

For the Leaders Considering Their Next Move

Some of the most accomplished people we speak with are quietly working through a question that has nothing to do with whether they are capable. The question is whether the next seat will actually use what they have built. That is a different question, and it deserves a different kind of process.

What we tend to see in leaders who land well in markets like this one: they are precise about what they bring rather than where they have been. They lean on trusted networks rather than mass applications. They invest time in understanding an organization before deciding it is the right fit, even when the calendar would prefer they move faster.

The national data confirms this is an employer's market. Companies are being more deliberate. But deliberate is not the same as inactive. The organizations worth joining are still hiring. They are simply being more careful about who they bring in. That tends to favor leaders who can articulate, with specificity, the kind of problem they are best suited to solve.

Holiday Note: Artemis will be observing Memorial Day on Monday, May 25. Our offices reopen Tuesday, May 26. Wishing you and your families a restful weekend.

Bridging Current State to Desired State

Sometimes the Most Useful Conversation Is Not About Hiring at All.

It is about clarifying what your organization actually needs the next leader to do, or what kind of seat you would actually thrive in. We are happy to think through that with you. No pitch. No pressure.

Or simply reply to this email. I read every one.

Find Leaders Who Fit, Perform and Stay.

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