Best Cities for Jobs
In the market for a new job? Dallas is the place to be.
Job hunting? You've come to the right place. Texas is a big winner on Forbes' 2016 list of the best big cities for jobs, with three metros making an appearance. And Dallas is on top.
Forbes pulled employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2004 through 2015 to rank the nation's 421 metropolitan statistical areas. Things like recent growth trends, midterm growth, long-term growth, and the region's momentum all factored into the overall scores. To come up with the big cities list, Forbes ranked the 70 metro areas that have more than 450,000 jobs.
Dallas-Plano-Irving is No. 5, behind San Francisco, San Jose, Orlando, and Nashville. From 2010 to 2015, job growth in Dallas clocked an impressive 18.86 percent increase. Toyota, Liberty Mutual, and now Jamba Juice are just a few of the large companies moving to Dallas and its suburbs, joining business giants Texas Instruments, Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Exxon Mobil, and AT&T.
Austin-Round Rock ranks No. 6 (23.8 percent job growth from 2010 to 2015), and San Antonio-New Braunfels is No. 12 (15.92 percent job growth during the five-year period). Forbes points out that Austin's tech industry is a draw, as is its (relatively) affordable housing, at least when compared to Silicon Valley. San Antonio's healthy population growth is being reflected in the creation of more jobs.
But the news is not so good in Houston, which experienced the biggest drop of any metro on the list, from sixth last year to 24th this year. Forbes anticipates more than 500,000 energy corridor jobs will disappear before things in the energy capital start to perk up.
Likewise, Fort Worth-Arlington slipped from No. 15 to No. 28, losing an estimated 250,000 energy jobs.
