Digital dominance

Dallas-Fort Worth named national hot spot for this tech career, says report

Texas is a good place for artificial intelligence jobs, which usually command salaries of $109,314 to $142,859.

Photo by Laurence Dutton/Getty Images

The Dallas-Fort Worth area ranks as one of the hot spots in the country for an in-demand area of tech expertise — user experience, or UX.

A new report from career website LinkedIn looks at an array of career categories exhibiting the highest year-over-year growth rates in hiring (based on the period from last April to October).

The report pinpoints Dallas-Fort Worth as one of the hottest U.S. markets for UX specialists, including UX consultants, designers, and researchers. DFW is listed as a "top region" along with the San Francisco Bay area and Greater Chicago area.

What, exactly, is UX? While the field and job can have many facets, one industry site puts it this succinctly: "UX design is the process of designing (digital or physical) products that are useful, easy to use, and delightful to interact with. It’s about enhancing the experience that people have while interacting with your product, and making sure they find value in what you’re providing."

Interestingly, UX designer hires in the U.S. in 2020 were 57 percent female, the LinkedIn report says. The total number of UX designer hires in 2020 was more than five times the hires made in 2019 (increasing from 2,535 to 15,664), it says.

DFW isn’t the only Texas metro area highlighted in the LinkedIn jobs report.

The Houston area gets a nod as one of the top U.S. markets seeing demand for creators of digital content, such as podcasters, bloggers, writers, and strategists.

The Austin area ranks as one of the hottest spots in the U.S. for artificial intelligence (AI). The report says jobs like artificial intelligence specialist, machine learning researcher, and machine learning engineer are in particularly high demand in the Austin area, as well as Denver and San Francisco Bay.

In 2019, the tech sector in Texas wielded an economic impact of $141.7 billion and employed more than 1 million people (including AI engineers, UX designers, and digital content creators), according to CompTIA, a trade association for the IT industry.

“Technology powered job growth and economic gains in the past decade in Texas and across the country while delivering countless benefits in how we work, communicate, create, and share,” Todd Thibodeaux, president and CEO of CompTIA, said in a 2020 release.

U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of Texas at Austin among the country’s top five schools for undergraduate students studying AI, an arm of computer science that simulates human intelligence.

Globally, AI is a fast-growing specialty among employers. A 2020 report from the World Economic Forum identified AI and machine learning positions as the No. 1 emerging category of jobs. Ninety-three percent of U.S. companies surveyed by the organization indicated they had adopted AI technology.

In 2019, job website Indeed reported that average salaries for the highest-paid AI jobs in the U.S. ranged from $109,314 to $142,859.

technology

New money

Texas Stock Exchange launches trading on 'Y'all Street' in Dallas

Photo by Oren Elbaz on Unsplash

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Two-step aside, New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. The Dallas-based Texas Stock Exchange, nicknamed Y’all Street, just kicked off live trading with five stocks for now — and with lots of Lone Star ambition.

“The Texas Stock Exchange aims to revitalize competition for [stock] issuers, establish the premier venue for listings, and create a world-class trading platform for all market participants,” the exchange says in a fact sheet.

The exchange — whose Texas-influenced nickname is a nod to New York City’s Wall Street — has collected at least $275 million in investments. The roughly 90 financial backers of TXSE include Bank of America, BlackRock, Charles Schwab, Citadel Securities, Dell Family Office, Fortress, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase.

Representatives of TXSE couldn’t be reached for comment. On its website, the exchange calls itself “the most well-capitalized equities exchange to ever be approved” by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Not to be outdone, NYSE has launched Dallas-based NYSE Texas and Nasdaq has expanded its presence in Dallas.

Y’all Street adds to Dallas-Fort Worth’s rising status as a major hub for financial services, with The Wall Street Journal naming North Texas the country’s second biggest financial hub after New York City. Among the biggest DFW players in financial services are:

Financial services provider Charles Schwab
Banking company Comerica
Auto lender Santander Consumer USA
Banking company Texas Capital Bancshares
Lender GM Financial
Investment bank Goldman Sachs
Financial services provider Fidelity
Banking conglomerate JPMorgan Chase
Megabank Wells Fargo

“A homegrown national exchange means more jobs, more investment, and more growth opportunities for businesses and communities across the Lone Star State,” Gabriela von zur Muehlen, senior vice president and chief policy officer at the Texas Association of Business, told The Texas Tribune.

In a move that will further elevate DFW’s status as a financial powerhouse, Goldman Sachs is building an 800,000-square-foot corporate campus near the American Airlines Center. The campus, with an initial price tag of $500 million, will be able to accommodate more than 5,000 employees when it opens in 2028; it’ll be Goldman Sachs’ largest office outside New York City.

Driven by DFW, the financial services sector now plays a massive role in Texas’ status as the Financial Capital of America, as declared by Gov. Greg Abbott.

Bulent Temel, an associate professor of practice in economics at the University of Texas at San Antonio, told Texas Standard that TXSE “is going to boost the credibility of the Texas economy.”

Texas’ estimated gross domestic product (GDP), a yardstick for the size of an economy, climbed to a record-setting $2.9 trillion in 2025, making it the state with the second highest GDP after California. DFW’s estimated GDP in 2023 stood at $744.6 billion, eclipsing the GDP of many countries.

“The center of gravity for American capitalism is now headquartered in the Boom Belt,” Abbott proclaimed in April, referring to an 11-state region (including Texas) in the South and Southeast that’s seeing tremendous economic and population growth. “The Texas Stock Exchange is the natural extension of that capitalism. It ensures that capital markets will reflect the quadrant that is driving American growth.”

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