NEW YORK CITY-And the winner is . . . Houston. The Big H grabbed the First Place prize in Cassidy Turley's measure of how employment is shaping up. In fact, year over year, February to February, Houston added 112.050 jobs.

What exactly this means for our industry is clear, say the researchers of Cassidy Turley: “For every 100,000 new office-using jobs created, vacancy typically falls by 60 basis points six months later.” So while CRE might lag behind the economy in that sense, the improvement is inevitable.

Houston beat out New York City, which added 94,900 jobs in that 12-month period, and Los Angeles with its 82,000 new non-farm workers. Rounding out the top five were Dallas at 69,800 new jobs and Atlanta, with 56,450.

Completing the Top 10 are:

6) Chicago (54,650)

7) Phoenix (47,200)

8) Seattle (41,700)

9) Minneapolis (41,350) and

10) San Francisco (37,100)

Professional and business services grew by 3%, making it the job sector with the largest growth, but other sectors were clustered tightly behind it, with construction coming in at 2.9%, office-using employment at 2.3% and leisure and hospitality coming in at 2.3%.

Education and health services were surprisingly far down on the list (1.8%), given the social emphasis on healthcare. But it government that stood alone in the negative column at -0.3%. Not surprising, of course, given the cutbacks it was endured, even before sequestration.