Its link to the energy play a big role, but they highlight Houston's ability to learn from past mistakes. This is especially true of its ability to not repeat what lead to the recession Houston suffered from 1982 to 1987. First, oil companies did not lay off too many workers after the 2008 crash.
Houston's energy sector is remarkably old -- the average age is over 50 -- and companies were nervous about laying off too many veteran workers before they had time to pass their skills down to the younger generation. Houston's energy demographics "helped to moderate energy industry job losses," leading to fewer job losses overall.
Second, policies were put in place to ensure that a housing bubble would not develop.
The 1980s also taught Houston a lesson about real estate. Between 1982 and 1987, Houston suffered "one of the worst regional recessions in U.S. history," Jankowski said. The metro area lost more than 220,000 jobs -- one in seven in the region -- but added nearly 188,000 housing units, as developers ignored the signs that demand had plummeted. The results were disastrous and scarring for the real estate industry.
Houston avoided over-building problems in this recession by tightening lending and home construction in the early years of the crisis. Houston didn't really have a housing bubble in the 2000s. The ratio between its median house prices and median household incomes peaked at 2.7 in 2006. By comparison, a typical Miami family would have to spend five-and-a-half years of their total income to afford an average home in the city by 2006. In Riverside, it would take nearly seven years. So as housing values cascading all across along the Sun Belt -- by 40 percent percent in Miami and 44 percent in Riverside -- they merely dipped about 2 percent in Houston.
