You’ll love this one from the Austin Business Journal.  The number of housing permits has fallen in the Austin, TX area, and job creation has slowed considerably.  However if you combine the two,  Voilà!  Things start looking much better:

While the last two years of declines in new housing activity have been difficult for Central Texas, some housing market indicators show Austin is relatively balanced, according to a report from the Austin Chamber of Commerce.

Residential permits for 2008 will be at their lowest level in decades, at approximately 14,000 units, a total similar to the activity of the late 1990’s. But, according to research the Chamber cites from Residential Strategies Inc., Austin’s “employment change to residential permit ratio”–measured over a nearly two-decade period–is at a healthy 1 single family permit to 2.15 net new jobs.

The employment change-to-permit ratio is one metric used to examine the balance between supply and demand in the market, based on the assumption that new jobs create demand for new homes. In other words, for every 2.15 new jobs created since 1990, one single-family residential building permit has been issued.

So even though the job market has gotten much worse, we can at least be happy that the housing industry is not currently building an excessive amount of inventory for the people who aren’t coming.  I suppose that’s good news, but calling the current housing market "healthy" is a bit of a stretch- no matter what the metric.