City Beat

One Texas city overtakes Dallas on ranking of America's best performing cities

Dallas skyline featuring Margaret Hunt Bridge and Trinity River

The Dallas area fell in the rankings this year.

DreamPictures/Shannon Faulk/Getty Images

A new study into America's best performing cities reveals that Austin is one of the country's top spots for jobs — and that the Dallas area fell in the rankings.

The annual report, which was released on January 24 by the Milken Institute, an independent, California-based think tank, studies economic expansion of 200 American cities who "create jobs and prosperity with their policy choices and their industrial, workforce, and innovation assets."

The study then uses indexes from job creation, wage gains, technological developments, and characteristics unique to each city to rank each region in terms of economic health.

Austin-Round Rock landed in the No. 3 spot, climbing six places from last year and unseating Dallas-Plano-Irving, which fell to No. 5. As far as its highest performing growth metrics, the Austin region ranked fourth for job growth and fifth for wage growth.

"A remarkably consistent high performer, the Austin-Round Rock region has now claimed a spot in the top five for nine of the last 10 Best-Performing Cities indexes, earning the top honors in 2009 and 2013," said the release.

As the study points out, Austin's technology sector is booming, accounting for more than 103,000 jobs in the region. Those positions — and the wages that come with them — lead to an increase in consumer spending, especially among Austin's booming bar, restaurant, and hospitality sectors.

Another attractive quality, says the study, is Austin's reputation as a university town. Forty-five percent of Austinites over 25 have at least a bachelor's degree, and the presence of graduate schools like The University of Texas at Austin's Dell Medical School point to advances in both the education and innovation sectors.

But, of course, with the sweet comes the sour. This boom has led to an increase in housing costs and disproportionate distribution of economic opportunities. As the report points out, the success of City of Austin policies to address these issues will ultimately determine the city's future (and its future ranking).

How Dallas-Plano-Irving fared
As mentioned, the Metroplex took a teensy tumble in 2018, falling two spots to No. 5.

"Although the metro did not place in the top 10 for any of our growth metrics, the combination of a robust and diverse high-tech industry and solid growth in jobs and wages across all the one-year, five-year, and short-term job growth measures reveals the broad-based vitality of the Dallas-Plano-Irving regional economy," boasts the report.

And while it didn't nab a top 10 spot for any growth metrics, Dallas did walk away with another important superlative. Between 2012-17, the Big D added 14,000 management positions, the most of any city in the U.S.

Dallas also ranked second for professional, scientific, and technical service jobs added in that same time period.

Elsewhere in Texas
At No. 32, San Antonio-New Braunfels made a shocking drop in 2018, falling 13 spots from last year.

Like Dallas, San Antonio didn't land in the top 10 for any growth metrics, but the city made good showings in high tech GDP growth (17th), job growth (28th), and wage growth from 2011-16 (31st).

Where the region didn't fare well, however, was in job growth over the past 12 months. The report ranks San Antonio a dismal 125th out of 200.

Cities across the Lone Star State popped up throughout this year's list, ranging from Austin and Dallas' high highs to Beaumont-Port Arthur's low lows.

College Station-Bryan, No. 22
Waco, No. 61
McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, No. 68
Fort Worth-Arlington, No. 70
Lubbock, No. 86
El Paso, 113
Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, No. 119
Laredo, No. 136
Killeen-Temple, No. 159
Brownsville-Harlingen, No. 167
Corpus Christi, No. 188
Beaumont-Port Arthur, No. 191

Rounding out America's top five best performing cities were Provo-Orem, Utah (No. 1); San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California (No. 2); and San Francisco-Redwood City-South San Francisco (No. 4).

reports

Jobs report

Texas ranks among 10 best states to find a job, says new report

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

You have a better chance of landing a job in Texas than in most other states.

If you’re hunting for a job in Texas amid a tough employment market, you stand a better chance of landing it here than you might in other states.

A new ranking by personal finance website WalletHub of the best states for jobs puts Texas at No. 7. The Lone Star State lands at No. 2 in the economic environment category and No. 18 in the job market category.

Massachusetts tops the list, and West Virginia appears at the bottom.

To determine the most attractive states for employment, WalletHub compared the 50 states across 34 key indicators of economic health and job market strength. Ranking factors included employment growth, median annual income, and average commute time.

“Living in one of the best states for jobs can provide stable conditions for the long term, helping you ride out the fluctuations that the economy will experience in the future,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo says.

In September, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas led the U.S. in job creation with the addition of 195,600 jobs over the past 12 months.

While Abbott proclaimed Texas is “America’s jobs leader,” the state’s level of job creation has recently slowed. In June, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted that the state’s year-to-date job growth rate had dipped to 1.8 percent, and that even slower job growth was expected in the second half of this year.

The August unemployment rate in Texas stood at 4.1 percent, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Throughout 2025, the monthly rate in Texas has been either four percent or 4.1 percent.

By comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate in August was 4.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2025, the monthly rate for the U.S. has ranged from 4 percent to 4.3 percent.

Here’s a rundown of the August unemployment rates in Texas’ four biggest metro areas:

Austin — 3.9 percent
Dallas-Fort Worth — 4.4 percent
San Antonio — 4.4 percent
Houston — 5 percent

Unemployment rates have remained steady this year despite layoffs and hiring freezes driven by economic uncertainty. However, the number of U.S. workers who’ve been without a job for at least 27 weeks has risen by 385,000 this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August. That month, long-term unemployed workers accounted for about one-fourth of all unemployed workers.

An August survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed a record-low 44.9 percent of Americans were confident about finding a job if they lost their current one.

This story originally was published on our sister site, InnovationMap.

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