Brownsville’s boom brings jobs — and competition— as employers from SpaceX to LNG ramp up hiring

Brownsville native Gilbert Garcia already has a job working for a call center, but he’s hoping to leverage his college education this year. 

“There’s a lot of people that are hiring and there’s a lot of applicants inside,” Garcia said about employers from SpaceX to Rio Grande LNG, Bechtel Construction, Doctors Hospital at Renaissance, the city of Brownsville, and several law enforcement agencies from state to local authorities.  

That’s why Garcia was among the hundreds of hopeful job seekers inside the Brownsville Events Center on Thursday morning — he even skipped breakfast to get there early — but craft coffee was provided. 

Garcia holds a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology from the University of Texas at the Rio Grande Valley and aspires to work at the intersection of sports medicine and business.

He’s 27 years old with experience working inside a U.S. Army post southwest of Oklahoma City, but no longer works for the federal government. 

Finding a career, rather than a job that pays the bills, is especially difficult for Garcia because he does not speak fluent Spanish. 

“Pretty much every single position I apply for, I usually get disqualified because I’m not bilingual,” Garcia said. 

So now he’s keeping tabs on what’s available outside the predominantly Spanish-speaking community on the Texas-Mexico border, but is hopeful about the possibility of matching with an employer locally. 

Garcia said that, in his experience, a living wage for a worker in Brownsville is somewhere between $13 and $18 an hour. Still, he’s noticed lower pay offered, along with promises of overtime and hours exceeding 40 a week. 

“It makes up for the lack of pay,” he said. 

Working in a call center is “not the field I prefer, but I’m still trying to find a job with my degree, so that’s always the fun part.” 

Major employers draw long lines

The longest line of job seekers snaked around the ballroom, with dozens of applicants behind a partition for a chance to chat with recruiters. It was for SpaceX — the rocket-launching company with contracts with NASA and the billionaire Elon Musk’s aspirations to reach the moon someday — all from Cameron County’s Boca Chica beachfront. 

SpaceX is hiring for dozens of jobs, including roles outside of engineering, according to its website. 

For example, a senior supply chain planner role at SpaceX was posted about a month ago in the city of Starbase, near Boca Chica Beach.

The job qualifications state that the applicant must hold one of the following: a bachelor’s degree with 2 years of experience in purchasing; an advanced degree; or at least 6 years of experience in purchasing, contract negotiation, production planning, supply chain management, or material cost control. 

That is what drew job seeker April Bass to stand in line. Bass recently moved to Brownsville from Corpus Christi and hopes her skills match employers’ needs – especially since she doesn’t hold a bachelor’s degree. 

Instead, she has more than two decades of experience in administration and accounting, holds a procurement certification, and has a long tenure in the oil and gas industry. She believes not having a college degree has held her back from being considered by employers, despite her experience. 

Still, she was hopeful she might be a good fit for SpaceX, and she doesn’t mind the 20-minute commute from her new home. For years, she would drive at least an hour each way to work in the oil and gas industry. 

Bass wasn’t confident about the job market’s reality as someone looking for a new career. 

“I think [accounting and administration] is constantly evolving [and] I think AI [artificial intelligence] has a lot to do with it. I feel like automation is doing away with a lot of in-person roles. That’s changing the industry,” Bass said. “Having a degree is something that I’m seeing more and more that employers are requiring.” 

To keep pace with innovation and improve her chances along the border, Bass has been teaching herself AI and some Spanish. 

A growing labor force, and its limits

The Spanish language is one skill that Jaime Eduardo Castilleja has under his belt, as a native speaker and Mexican national. 

Castilleja is a legal resident of the U.S. and is working to obtain his citizenship while living in Brownsville. He went to high school in Matamoros, a city in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas across the bridge from Brownsville. 

Overall, he’s noticed that local employers don’t mind that he’s not a citizen. 

“In these places, it’s not a big deal if you’re a resident or if you have a work visa or are an American citizen, I think it’s just that you can work legally,” Casteilleja said. 

But 26-year-old Castilleja does not hold a GED or high school diploma in the U.S., so his work options have been limited to fast-food restaurants, where he’s worked for the past four years. 

As such, he doesn’t expect to make much more than $10 an hour in Brownsville, which is more than what he could earn in Mexico, but it’s not enough to live comfortably in America. A living wage in Brownsville is closer to $15 or $16 an hour, he estimated. 

Someday, Castilleja dreams of becoming a computer programmer and making video games, but he sees that as a long road ahead. He knows that after he pursues and is granted U.S. citizenship, that could open the door to a wider variety of careers and access to higher education. 

“The truth is that I don’t see myself working in a particular industry; I just want to see what’s open so I can connect with available work,” he said.